Moundville Earth Mounds near Tuscaloosa Alabama Mark Stars of Perseus

This posting is a decipherment showing that Moundville earth mounds near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, mark stars of what we today call Perseus.

If mounds in eastern Louisiana and western Mississippi mark the stars of Auriga in the ancient Native America land survey by astronomy, then mounds to the East in Mississippi and Alabama can only mark the stars of Perseus, and so it is.

Indeed, in our decipherments we have not one, but TWO comprehensive sites with many, many mounds that leave absolutely no doubt about that conclusion.

Let us first take a look at Moundville Archaeological Park near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and then in the subsequent posting we will examine the lesser known, and only relatively recently archaeologically examined, Shelton Stone Mound Complex in eastern Calhoun County to the east of Jacksonville, Alabama.

The Wikipedia recites about Tuscaloosa, Alabama history:

"Nearly 12,000 years ago, Native Americans or Paleo-Indians arrived in what today is referred to as the Deep South. Paleo-Indians in the South were hunter-gatherers who pursued the megafauna that became extinct following the end of the Pleistocene age. After thousands of years, the Paleo-Indians developed a rich and complex agricultural society. Archaeologists called these people the Mississippians of the Mississippian culture; they were Mound Builders. Their large earthworks, built for political and religious rituals and expressing their cosmology, still stand throughout the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, as well as their tributaries in the Southeast."

Moundville is an important mound site of Native America. As written in the Abstract to Archaeology of the Moundville Chiefdom, Smithsonian Series in Archaeological Inquiry, University of Alabama Press, 2006, Vernon J. Knight (Editor):

"At its height the Moundville ceremonial center was a densely occupied town of approximately 1,000 residents, with at least 29 earthen mounds surrounding a central plaza. Today, Moundville is not only one the largest and best-preserved Mississippian sites in the United States, but also one of the most intensively studied. This volume brings together nine Moundville specialists who trace the site’s evolution and eventual decline."

The Wikipedia writes at Moundville Archaeological Site:

"Moundville ... was the political and ceremonial center of a regionally organized Mississippian culture chiefdom polity between the 11th and 16th centuries. The archaeological park portion of the site is administered by the University of Alabama Museums and encompasses 185 acres (75 ha), consisting of 29 platform mounds around a rectangular plaza. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.
Moundville is the second-largest site in the United States of the classic Middle Mississippian era, after Cahokia in Illinois. The culture was expressed in villages and chiefdoms throughout the central Mississippi River Valley, the lower Ohio River Valley, and most of the Mid-South area, including Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi as the core of the classic Mississippian culture area. The park contains a museum and an archaeological laboratory."

Moundville Archaeological Park near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, opens its online presence by urging visitation, writing:

"Moundville Archaeological Park is just 14 miles south of Exit 71-A on Interstate 59/20."

There is also understanding expressed for the systematic nature of the location of the mounds:

"Of the two largest mounds in the group, Mound A occupies the center of the great plaza, and Mound B lies just to the north on the site’s central axis. The latter is a steep pyramid with two ramps, rising to a height of fifty-eight feet. The arrangement of the mounds and plaza gives the impression of symmetry and planning."

How right they are!

The entire complex, as shown in our simplified decipherment map below, which has no affiliation to any of the above or below named persons or institutions, marks the stars of Perseus.

The position of the mounds in our illustration relies on mound locations shown in Moundville online maps at the Research Laboratories of Archaeology at http://rla.unc.edu/mdvl/maps.html, while the corresponding star positions are given via the astronomy software program Starry Night Pro. See http://astronomy.starrynight.com.

The entire image suggests that the ancients viewed Perseus as a seated figure. This general representation is confirmed in what we view to be the much older Shelton Stone Mound Complex in eastern Calhoun County to the east of Jacksonville, Alabama, which we decipher in the next posting.

THIS POSTING IS Posting Number 43 of
The Great Mound, Petroglyph and Painted Rock Art Journey of Native America

Moundville Earth Mounds near Tuscaloosa Alabama Mark Stars of Perseus