Moundville's Archaeological Museum reopens

Submitted by Sammy Smith ([email protected])

On Saturday, May 16th, 2010, the Jones Archaeological Museum at the 320-acre Moundville Archaeological Park reopened after a two-year, $5 million renovation. The Moundville site is in Alabama, south of Tuscaloosa.

The Museum originally opened in May 1939, and was built by Civilian Conservation Corps laborers. Notes the Museum website:

Today, the museum combines the latest technology with more than 200 stunning artifacts to describe one of the most significant Native American archaeological sites in the United States. Outside, visitors are greeted by symbols of the Native American culture mounted on enormous wooden heraldic poles. Inside, visitors will find life-size figures displaying the clothing and jewelry of Mississippian cultures, ceremonial feather decorations hand-sewn by Native-American artists, stunning pottery and other artworks placed in display cases that light up when recorded narratives talk about them and three-dimensional, moving depiction of a Native American maker of medicine who appears in a reconstructed earthlodge, taking them on a journey into the afterlife.

Read more about this famous multi-mound site elsewhere on this website in a favorable review of a 116-page volume titled “Moundville” (University of Alabama Press, 2008), by John H. Blitz.

Where to find it

Click above to go to a larger Google interactive map of the area.

Posted online on Monday, May 17th, 2010

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Submitted by Sammy Smith ([email protected]) Oblique view of Moundville facing south, with the Black Warrior River in the foreground, from Google Earth. John H. Blitz doesn’t mince words. Answering the question who built the mounds at the famous Mississippian settlement next to the Black Warrior River at Moundville, Alabama, Blitz writes: “We don’t know” (page 4).

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