Criel Mound
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The Criel Mound is a Native American burial mound located in South Charleston, West Virginia, USA. The mound was built by the Adena culture, probably around 250-150 BC, and lay equidistant between two “scared circles”, each 556 feet in diameter. It was originally 33 feet high and 173 feet in diameter at the base, making it the second-largest such burial mound in the state of West Virgina. (The Grave Creek Mound in Moundsville is the largest.) The Criel Mound is located at .
The mound was originally conical in shape. The top was leveled in 1840 for the erection of a judges' stand that was used for horse races that were conducted around the base of the mound at the time.
The Criel Mound was excavated in 1883-84 under the auspices of the US Bureau of Ethnology and the supervision of Col. P.W. Norris. The actual excavation was performed by Professor Cyrus Thomas of the Smithsonian Institution. Inside the mound, Professor Thomas found thirteen skeletons: two near the top of the mound, and eleven at the base. The skeletons at the base consisted of a single large skeleton at the center, surrounded by ten other skeletons arranged in a spoke-like pattern, with their feet pointing toward the central skeleton. The skeletons at the base had been wrapped in elm bark and were lying on a floor of white ash and bark. Several artifacts were found buried with the skeletons, including arrowheads, lanceheads, and shell and pottery fragments. The central skeleton was accompanied by a fish-dart, a lance-head, and a sheet of hammered native copper near the head. Holes found at the base of the mound suggest that the bodies at the base had been enclosed in a wooden vault. [1]
The Criel Mound is part of the second-largest concentration of Adena mounds and circular enclosures known. This area extends for eight miles along the upper terraces of the Kanawha River floodplain, in the vicinity of present-day Charleston. In 1894, Cyrus Thomas reported 50 mounds in this area, ranging from 3’ to 35’ in height and from 35’ to 200’ in diameter. He also reported finding 8 to 10 circular earthworks enclosing from 1 to 30 acres. Stone mounds dotted the buffs above the floodplain.
While many of the original Adena mounds were destroyed during the development of the area, a few still remain. One small mound (the Wilson Mound) has survived in a private cemetery in South Charleston, while another—the Shawnee Reservation Mound—still exists in Institute.
Today, the Criel Mound is the centerpiece of Staunton Park, a small municipal park maintained by the city of South Charleston. It is a gathering place for many community activities such as arts and crafts fairs, revivals, memorial services, sunrise services, and town carnivals.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ South Charleston History Book Publications Committee. The History of South Charleston. 392 pages. Privately printed: 1995.
[edit] Further reading
- Dragoo, Don W. Mounds for the Dead. 315 pages. The Carnegie Museum of Natural History: 1963. ISBN 0-911239-09-X.
- Silverberg, Robert. The Mound Builders. 276 pages. Ohio University Press: 1970. ISBN 0-8214-0839-9.
- Webb, Willam S., and Snow, Charles E. The Adena People. 369 pages. The University of Tennessee Press: 1974. ISBN 0-87049-568-2.
