ABSTRACT
In the mid-nineteenth century, as the United States was still expanding its territories in the western half of the continent, the emerging discipline of archaeology clashed with popular and effectively racist misperceptions about Native Americans and their past. This clash is exemplified in the so-called Moundbuilder Controversy, a protracted and bitter argument that lasted almost to the end of the century over who had constructed the thousands of prehistoric earthen mounds found from the American Midwest to the Eastern seaboard. The mounds are of two types. The first comprises small, conically shaped mounds that contained human burials, often with elaborate grave goods, and were constructed by the Adena and Hopewell Cultures in approximately 1000 bc to ad 500 (as a historical aside, Thomas Jefferson is credited with the first systematic excavations on the continent when he dug mounds on his Monticello estate). The second type consists of large, flat-topped mounds, sometimes called temple mounds, belonging to the Mississippian Tradition (approximately ad 700–1700). On the tops of the mounds were large buildings such as temples, chiefs’ ‘palaces’ and other structures. At Cahokia, Illinois, a large Mississippian period city, the largest of the temple mounds is Monks Mound, over 30 metres in height.
