Backusburg Mounds, near Backusburg in Kentucky’s Jackson Purchase, is one of western Kentucky’s most important archaeological sites and the only one in Calloway County listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Set on a ridgeline above a fork of the Clarks River, it includes a notably large mound whose unusual shape may reflect several smaller mounds built side by side. Artifacts, skeletons, projectile points, and pottery found there indicate a former village associated with the complex. Though long known locally and only lightly studied for much of the twentieth century, later work identified the mounds as the work of a Mississippian people and underscored the site’s value for preservation.