Pyramid Mound, designated 12k14, is a locally important

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology a ...

at the city of

Vincennes Vincennes (, ) is a commune in the Val-de-Marne department in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. It is next to but does not include the Château de Vincennes and Bois de Vincennes, which are attache ...

in the southwestern part of the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

. Located on the city's edge, this substantial loess hill bears evidence of prehistoric occupation, and it is a landmark to the city's contemporary residents.

Archaeological work

A survey conducted by the Illinois State Museum in the early 1960s demonstrate that the region surrounding Vincennes was the homeland of a Mississippian group of people known as the Vincennes culture. Based upon the published results of the 1874 Smithsonian survey, an amateur antiquarian writing in the 1890s remarked on the relationship of Pyramid Mound to larger archaeological sites in the east central United States. Besides proposing that it was related to the large geometric earthworks that the Hopewell built in Ohio, he suggested that Pyramid and several other mounds near Vincennes marked the northeastern boundary of a confederacy that was centered at the Mississippian city of

Cahokia The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site ( 11 MS 2) is the site of a pre-Columbian Native American city (which existed 1050–1350 CE) directly across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, Missouri. This historic park lies in south- ...

near

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

, although he appeared not to understand the substantial cultural differences between the two peoples of "

Mound Builders A number of pre-Columbian cultures are collectively termed "Mound Builders". The term does not refer to a specific people or archaeological culture, but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks erected for an extended period of more than 5 ...

." Two different histories of Vincennes and its vicinity, published in 1886 and 1911, regarded Pyramid Mound and the other nearby flat-topped mounds as evidence of prehistoric religious sites comparable to the pyramids of the

Aztec The Aztecs () were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl ...

s in Mexico City.Greene, George E.
History of Old Vincennes and Knox County, Indiana
'. Vol. 1.

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

: S.J. Clarke, 1911, 10. Later archaeological work, conducted by professionals in the late twentieth century, has largely discounted earlier conclusions. Accounts published in the 1970s and 1998 concluded that Pyramid and comparable sites nearby were actually natural loess hills that Indians of the Woodland period chose to use as cemeteries.Stafford, C. Russell.
The Geomorphology of Sugar Loaf Mound: Prehistoric Cemeteries and the Formation of Loess Cones in the Lower Wabash Valley
. ''Geoarchaeology: An International Journal'' 13.7 (1998): 649-672. Contributing to this conclusion is the fact that these hills are consistently of similar sizes, composed of the same sorts of soil, located on the eastern edge of the

Wabash River The Wabash River (French: Ouabache) is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed May 13, 2011 river that drains most of the state of Indiana in the United States. It flows from ...

valley, and shaped to be in line with the

prevailing winds In meteorology, prevailing wind in a region of the Earth's surface is a surface wind that blows predominantly from a particular direction. The dominant winds are the trends in direction of wind with the highest speed over a particular point on ...

. Consequently, although these hills are definitely shaped like artificial

burial mounds A tumulus (plural tumuli) is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds or ''kurgans'', and may be found throughout much of the world. A cairn, which is a mound of stones built ...

and consistently called "mounds", they are not truly mounds of any sort.

Protection

Despite its natural origins, Pyramid Mound is an important

, and because of its archaeological importance, the "mound" was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 1975. It is the center of a park operated by the Knox County Parks and Recreation Department.Our Parks
Knox County Parks and Recreation Department, 2012. Accessed 2012-11-01.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places in Indiana Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Indiana Geography of Knox County, Indiana Hills of Indiana Protected areas of Knox County, Indiana Vincennes, Indiana Woodland period Landforms of Knox County, Indiana National Register of Historic Places in Knox County, Indiana