The Hamilton Mounds Site

The Hamilton Mounds site, a cluster of three mounds along the Buttahatchee River, is the largest indigenous mound site in Marion County, Alabama. It includes a large mound with a two-tiered summit, a smaller two-tiered mound, and a still smaller mound between them. The mounds were built in several construction phases during the Mississippian Stage (AD 1250 – 1500), when indigenous culture in what is now Alabama was heavily influenced by ideas and practices from peoples in the Mississippi Valley. These and other Mississippian mound sites commonly had ceremonial or residential buildings on their summits and served as spiritual, governmental, and cultural centers for populations scattered throughout surrounding river valleys. Pottery and stone items made by the people who occupied this site indicate a close association with the massive mound complex at Moundville, about twenty miles south of present-day Tuscaloosa. The people here likely relied heavily on growing corn, beans, and squash in the rich bottomlands of the Buttahatchee River. The site remains very important to numerous Southeastern indigenous tribes who assert an ancestral connection with those who built and occupied Alabama's ancient mounds, and the earthwork landscapes and the objects and information recovered from them reveal a rich cultural tradition that still thrives today among these tribes.

Alabama · United States