This burial mound is one of hundreds constructed during the Middle Woodland period between 100 BC and AD 500 by native people who shared burial practices with other similar cultural groups extending from the Gulf and Atlantic coasts to Canada. In northern Alabama, archaeologists have named these people and their mounds Copena, blending the words copper from eastern Tennessee and Michigan and galena, a lead ore from Missouri. These minerals are common to mounds built here in the Tennessee Valley and indicate a far-flung trading network. The people who built such mounds used great care to design these structures and enshrine their ancestors, and even the sand and clay used to build them were transported from long distances.