Effigy mounds and rock art of midcontinental North America: Shared iconography, shared stories

Abstract

The effigy mounds of the Upper Midwest and the Ohio Valley long have been regarded as distinct and independent cultural developments. A review of effigy mound iconography in both regions reveals similarities suggesting that they are elements of a shared cultural tradition. Comparisons with rock art imagery from the Upper Midwest and Missouri, the inferred centers of this artistic and ceremonial florescence, reveal co-occurrences of specific motifs and provide additional evidence of cultural connections among the Late Woodland to early Late Precontact societies inhabiting the lower Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio river valleys. Oral traditions of Native American groups with documented connections to these regions allow this rich corpus of imagery to be understood as key episodes in their genesis stories.

Great Serpent Mound and the Milky Way

“…The Great Serpent Mound, therefore, represents a fusion of Mississippian/ Dhegihan ideology and artistic styles, Upper Midwestern Late Woodland modes of telling sacred stories with effigy mounds and Fort Ancient culture traditions. This cultural confluence could not have happened prior to 1100 AD (Lepper et al 2022). This amazing earthen sculpture of the Great Serpent, which is an overwhelming presence in the night sky as the Milky Way, is equally overwhelming as a landscape experience (Figure 1, above) and as an epic story of creation.…”