The Moundbuilders: Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America by George R. Milner, Thames and Hudson, London, 2004.
I have always had an interest the the moundbuilders, and hope to travel east to visit some of the mound sites. It is truly amazing the work that was done by ancient inhabitants of North America, and even more impressive when you consider that we only have less than ten percent of the original sites remaining as many have been covered by farms or urban growth.
This book presents the story of the moundbuiders in a chronological order, dividing the chapters into mobile hunter groups, sedentary hunter groups, builders of burial mounds Woodland period, the chief period, villagers and lastly the Trail of Tears.
The book reports on many different sites including: Cahokia from the chief period, Hopewell sites in Ohio, including the Serpent Mound, Moundville. There are mound ruins throughout the east extending from Florida through Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky and on to Illinois and Ohio. The book has many pictures of artwork and pottery. There are also sites where many arrow heads were gathered.
The book does a very good job of describing many of the mounds as burial sites. However, as those things on top of the mounds are now gone, it may fall fault in describing other purposes of the mounds. There are mounds that had wood walls as evidenced by post holes.
I enjoyed this archeological study of Eastern North America.
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