Stone Mound Burials

Stone Mound Burials – Used as a marker of a final resting place for the Indigenous Ancestors.

Stones stacked into a “mound” shape above the body of the deceased.  The older stone mound burial grounds show the stone mounds to be shaped into a “pyramidal shape.”  Some of them measuring over twenty feet wide and three feet tall.  After the Archaic Period, there was a shift in the design of the mounds now being shaped into a more compact “oval” shape.  I classify these stone mounds as “tower mounds.”  These stone mounds could be as tall as seven feet but were much narrower, usually measuring no more than five feet wide.

I have come across over a thousand examples of these two types of stone mound construction.

Necessity – Meaning one or just a couple of stone mound burials in a small, concentrated area.  These burial mounds were created due to an untimely death of a person/persons that were located far from the village site and tribal burial ground.  The inability to carry the bodies of the deceased a long distance to the village burial ground created the “necessity” to bury these people at or near where the died.

Ceremonial – The deceased in this case, has died near the village location.  They would be given a proper send-off ceremony like our modern funeral service.  They would be properly purified by sage or cedar.  The village people would be able to mourn over the body.  The deceased would then be taken to the official nearby assigned burial ground and placed in the ground next to their family, friends, and Ancestors.  Gifts would be left with the deceased persons body and prayers by the Medicine Man/Woman left to guard the Spirit of the deceased.  White quartz (in some cases) would be placed on top of the assembled stone mound as a protector against evil Spirits harming the deceased as they “cross over.”  The village people would return to pay their respects anytime they chose.  As they did so, it was the custom of Eastern Woodland Indigenous people to always place one single rock on the stone mound burial as a form of respect to show the deceased they are not forgotten.