Bear, Linear and Conical Mounds, Marquette, Iowa, 1983. Around AD 650, following the decline of the influential and stabilizing Hopewell culture, the practice of molding earth into conical, linear, and effigy mounds became common to certain Indian groups living in the present states of Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. These Indians, linked by beliefs that disavowed the Hopewell cultural practice of differentiating groups by social strata, buried their dead in mounds up to 20 feet wide and 70 feet long. To increase their visibility the mounds were temporarily outlined with agricultural lime for this photograph.
|