An effigy mound is a raised pile of earth built in the shape of a stylized animal, symbol, religious figure, human, or other figure. Effigy mounds were primarily built during the Late Woodland Period (AD 350-1300).
Effigy mounds were constructed in many Native American cultures. Scholars believe they were primarily for religious purposes, although some also fulfilled a burial mound function. The builders of the effigy mounds are usually referred to as the Mound Builders. Native American societies in Wisconsin built more effigy mounds than did those in any other region of North America—between 15,000 and 20,000 mounds, at least 4,000 of which remain today.
Native North American effigy mounds have been compared to the large-scale geoglyphs such as the Nazca Lines of Peru.
Famous quotes containing the word mound:
“Worn down by the hoofs of millions of half-wild Texas cattle driven along it to the railheads in Kansas, the trail was a bare, brown, dusty strip hundreds of miles long, lined with the bleaching bones of longhorns and cow ponies. Here and there a broken-down chuck wagon or a small mound marking the grave of some cowhand buried by his partners “on the lone prairie” gave evidence to the hardships of the journey.”
—For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)