American Indians in Mississippi constructed two main types of mounds, burial mounds and platform mounds, and the Pocahontas archaeological site has one of each: Mound A is a platform mound, while Mound B, across Highway 49 on private land, is a 10 feet tall burial mound. Platform mounds served as elevated bases for wooden buildings and are commonly believed by archaeologists to have supported residences for the religious or secular leaders of American Indian communities. Mound construction began about 6000 years ago during the Middle Archaic Period, though archaeologists have not yet determined the function of the earliest mounds or whether they were used as platforms. Mounds clearly understood as platform mounds began about 2000 years ago during the Woodland period, about 3000 to 1000 years ago, and the tradition continued into the Mississippian period, about 1000 to 500 years ago, remaining active in the 16th and 17th centuries A.D. when Spanish and later French explorers first contacted the native inhabitants of the Southeast. Burial mounds, conical in shape, were constructed primarily during the Woodland period, although Mound B at Pocahontas is believed to be approximately the same age as Mound A. Archaeologists believe the individuals buried in Mound B held special status in the community, possibly as elders or leaders of great prestige, and burial mounds often contain elaborate and exotic grave goods, including items taken from the conical grave mound at Pocahontas in the early 1900s. The burial of individuals in conical mounds was an elaborate and dramatic ritual intended to honor the dead, and the mounds were meant to stand for generations as monuments to their lives. Many American Indian burial mounds have been destroyed over the past 200 years by land development, grave robbing, and archaeological disturbance, but in the past 30 years archaeologists have become more sensitive to American Indian concerns about disturbing ancestral graves, leading to a partnership among archaeologists, American Indians, and the federal government to help protect these ancient monuments, supported by state and federal laws such as the Mississippi Antiquities Act, which makes disturbing such burials illegal and punishable by fines or imprisonment.
