At 62 feet (19 m) high and 240 feet (73 m) in diameter, the Grave Creek Mound is one of the largest conical type burial mounds in the United States. The builders of the site, members of the Adena culture, moved more than 60,000 tons of dirt to create it about 250-150 BC. It is located in present-day Moundsville, West Virginia, near the banks of the Ohio River.
The first recorded excavation of the 2,000-year-old mound took place in 1838, and was conducted by local amateurs. The largest mound among those built by the Adena, it has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
In 1978 the state opened the Delf Norona Museum at the site. It displays numerous artifacts and interprets the ancient Adena Culture. In 2010, under an agreement with the state, the US Army Corps of Engineers gave nearly 450,000 artifacts to the museum for archival. They represent 10,000 years of habitation at the nearby site of the Marment Lock, and will expand understanding of indigenous cultures in the Kanawha Valley.
Read more about Grave Creek Mound: Description, History, Delf Norona Museum
Famous quotes containing the words grave, creek and/or mound:
“In that grave One
They spoke of the sun
And moon and stars,”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder’s gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)