Exploitation and Excavation
Amateur and semi-professional excavations first began in the site around 1913 and continued sporadically for several decades. In 1930, Colonel Fain W. King, a businessman from Paducah, Kentucky, began private excavations of the site, intending to turn it into a tourist attraction. In cooperation with his wife, Blanche Busey King, he opened the site for tourists under the name "Ancient Buried City". The Kings' venture was highly controversial because they used sensational and misleading advertising, altered the site to make it more visually appealing, and made dubious and exaggerated interpretations of the site. These actions put them directly in opposition to professional archaeologists who studied the site and did not want it disturbed.
The Kings deeded the site to go to the Western Baptist Hospital in Paducah upon their death in 1946. The hospital continued to operate the site as a tourism business until 1983.
That year the hospital donated the site to Murray State University, to be used for research and training students. In 1984 the site's historic importance was recognized and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. In 2004, the site became the 11th State Historical Site of Kentucky and entered the control of the Kentucky State Parks.
In addition to the freestanding Mound A, the major ceremonial mound, the museum park encloses three excavated mounds with archaeological features, to aid in their interpretation for visitors. It displays the outstanding collection of pottery and artifacts excavated on site. A mural with a birds-eye view of the Mississippian village on the bluff shows how the entire complex would have looked.
Read more about this topic: Wickliffe Mounds
Famous quotes containing the words exploitation and and/or exploitation:
“Exploitation and oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage called imperialism, which made the Powers behave the way they did. I have no illusions on this score, nor do I believe that any Asian nation or African nation, in the same state of dominance, and with the same system of colonial profit-amassing and plunder, would have behaved otherwise.”
—Han Suyin (b. 1917)
“The elements of success in this business do not differ from the elements of success in any other. Competition is keen and bitter. Advertising is as large an element as in any other business, and since the usual avenues of successful exploitation are closed to the profession, the adage that the best advertisement is a pleased customer is doubly true for this business.”
—Madeleine [Blair], U.S. prostitute and “madam.” Madeleine, ch. 5 (1919)