A Platform Mound is any earthwork intended to support a structure or activity. Earthworks can refer to: Civil engineering earthworks based on moving massive quantites of soil; The Earthworks audio equipment company; The novel Earthworks by Brian Aldiss; The earthworks style of art. ...

The Mississippian Native American Platform Mound

Specifically, the Mississippian Culture is well known for using platform mounds as a central aspect of their overarching religious beliefs. Mississippian platform mounds are usually four-sided truncated pyramids, steeply sided, with steps built of wooden logs ascending one side. The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 900 to 1500 of the Common Era. ... This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ...

A long-standing interpretation of Mississippian mounds comes from Vernon James Knight, who stated that the Mississippian platform mounds were one of the three "sacra," or objects of sacred display, of the Mississippian religion (also see Southeastern Ceremonial Complex). His logic is based on analogy to ethnographic and historic data on related Native American tribal groups in the Southeastern United States. The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (sometimes called the Southern Cult) is the name given to a broad, regional similarity of artifacts, iconography, ceremonies and mythology of the Mississippian culture that accompanied their adoption of maize agriculture. ... Logic, from Classical Greek λόγος (logos), originally meaning the word, or what is spoken, (but coming to mean thought or reason) is most often said to be the study of arguments, although the exact definition of logic is a matter of controversy among philosophers. ... Analogy is either the cognitive process of transferring information from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target), or a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. ... Ethnography (from the Greek ethnos = nation and graphe = writing) refers to the qualitative description of human social phenomena, based on months or years of fieldwork. ... History is often used as a generic term for information about the past, such as in geologic history of the Earth. When used as the name of a field of study, history refers to the study and interpretation of the record of human societies. ... Assiniboin Boy, an Atsina Native Americans in the United States (also Indians, American Indians, First Americans, Indigenous Peoples, Aboriginal Peoples, Aboriginal Americans, Amerindians, Amerinds, or Original Americans) are those indigenous peoples within the territory that is now encompassed by the continental United States, and their descendants in modern times. ... Tribal refers to a culture or society based on tribes or clans. ...

Knight suggests a microcosmic ritual organization based around a “native earth” autocthony, agriculture, fertility, and purification scheme, in which mounds and the site layout replicate cosmology. Mounds rebuilding episodes are construed as rituals of burial and renewal, while the four-sided construction acts to replicate the flat earth and the four quarters of the earth.

Documented uses for Mississippian platform mounds include semi-public chief’s house platforms, public temple platforms, mortuary platforms, charnal house platforms, earth lodge/town house platforms, residence platforms, square ground and rotunda platforms, and dance platforms. Chief can refer to : Paramount chief is the highest political leader in a region or country typically administered with a chief-based system. ... The word temple has different meanings in the fields of architecture, religion, geography, anatomy, and education. ... A mortuary is a cold chamber used to keep the deceased from seriously decomposing; this practice exists for the sake of recognition of the deceased and to allow time to prepare for burial. ... Earth houses are old architectural style for eco-friendly housing. ...

Platform Mounds Around the World

The use of platform mounds is documented elsewhere in the world, including among the Olmec and other groups in Mesoamerica, the Hohokam, and in periods of Ancient China. The Olmec were an ancient people living in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, roughly in what are the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. ... Mesoamerica is the region extending from central Mexico south to the northwestern border of Costa Rica that gave rise to a group of stratified, culturally related agrarian civilizations spanning an approximately 3,000-year period before the European discovery of the New World by Columbus. ... Hohokam is the name of one of the four major prehistoric archaeological traditions of the American Southwest. ... China is the worlds oldest continuous major civilization, with written records dating back about 3,500 years and with 5,000 years being commonly used by Chinese as the age of their civilization. ...

References

• Knight, Vernon J., Jr. 1981. Mississippian Ritual. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida.
• Knight, Vernon J., Jr. 1986. The Institutional Organization of Mississippian Religion. American Antiquity 51:675-687.