Looking into The Great Mound at Mounds State Park in Anderson, Indiana. Photo by Mike Luoma.

Ancient Astronomical Earthworks of the American Midwest

Celestial Alignments and Embanked Enclosures in Indiana’s Mounds State Park

What little we know about the Adena and Hopewell indigenous cultures of the pre-contact North American Midwest we have gleaned from what remains of their many mounds and earthworks. There is still much to be learned. The earthworks have not usually been valued, however, by post-contact settlers, and so what remains is a tiny fraction of what was once built.

Entrance to Mounds State Park, Anderson, Indiana. Photo by Mike Luoma.

The unassuming earthworks of Mounds State Park in Anderson, Indiana, demonstrate enormous complexity — there is much more to them than first meets the eye. They are some of the best, most intact examples left of these earthworks in east central Indiana. 300 Mounds were once counted in the vicinity. Fewer than a hundred are said to be left in some shape or another — but the two major earthworks here comprise half of those actually intact. Great Mound is said to be one of the best preserved of all of the earthworks in the entire Ohio Valley region.

Archeoastronomy shows these embanked enclosures align with risings and settings of the sun and moon on…