Venable Mound (the last remaining mound of the McTheney Mounds site) is an
archaeological site
An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or recorded history, historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline ...
in
Morehouse Parish, Louisiana
Morehouse Parish (French:Paroisse de Morehouse) is a List of parishes in Louisiana, parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 25,629. The parish seat is Bastrop, Louis ...
with a single mound with components from the
Troyville,
Coles Creek and
Plaquemine period.
Description
The site formerly had three mounds and was a group known as the McTheney Mounds site. It is situated on a natural levee on the east bank of
Bayou Bartholomew
Bayou Bartholomew is the longest bayou in the world, meandering approximately in the U.S. states of Arkansas and Louisiana.U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed June 3, 2011
...
.
[ The site has been under cultivation since about the 1850s. In the 1870s Benjamin Brodnax of the ]Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...
visited the site when it still had three of its mounds. By the time Clarence Bloomfield Moore
Clarence Bloomfield Moore (January 14, 1852 – March 24, 1936), more commonly known as C.B. Moore, was an American archaeologist and writer. He studied and excavated Native American sites in the Southeastern United States.
Early life and educa ...
came in 1908 it only had two.platform mound
A platform mound is any earthwork or mound intended to support a structure or activity. It typically refers to a flat-topped mound, whose sides may be pyramidal.
In Eastern North America
The indigenous peoples of North America built substru ...
is approximately in height, with a base by square and a summit platform measuring square. Excavations have shown that the site was first occupied from 400 and 700 CE during the Troyville period. Construction of the mound is dated to 700 to 1200 CE during the Coles Creek period. Analysis of ceramics from the site date have been dated other occupations of the site to 1200 to 1541 during the Plaquemine/Mississippian period.[ Venable Mound is named after Charles Venable.
]
See also
* Jordan Mounds: also in Morehouse Parish
* Culture, phase, and chronological table for the Mississippi Valley
References
{{Pre-Columbian North America
Troyville culture
Archaeological sites of the Coles Creek culture
Plaquemine Mississippian culture
Mounds in Louisiana
Geography of Morehouse Parish, Louisiana