UA Museum Dig Unearths Rare, 15th Century Native American Council House

MOUNDVILLE, Ala. – A University of Alabama Museum of Natural History archaeological team has discovered the remains of a type of 15th-century Native American council house never before found in Alabama.

Known as an earthlodge, the structure was a place where chiefs of the Moundville Indians met with their council to make important decisions. It was uncovered Tuesday by a team excavating at Moundville as part of the museum’s Expedition Program, an annual scientific dig with professional and academic instructors guiding lay people in archaeological techniques.

Under the guidance of Dr. Vernon James Knight, curator of Southeastern Archaeology for the UA Museum of Natural History and a UA anthropology professor, the group discovered, on the surface of a large mound, the burned, collapsed remains of the rare structure, believed to be about 550 years old. Ceramic smoking pipes, decorated pottery fragments and other artifacts have also been recovered from the site.

“This is a unique and special find,” Knight said. “The site was generally abandoned about 1500 when the tribal chiefs split up.”

A few earthlodges have been found in the southern Appalachians and in Georgia, but until now archaeologists did not previously believe they existed as far west as Alabama’s prehistoric Moundville. Knight called the discovery one of the biggest finds with which he has been associated.

The large, square earthlodge was a semi-underground, wooden building, with narrow entrance tunnels bordered by timber walls. Thus far, the Museum Expedition has uncovered the tunnel entranceway and portions of the earthlodge’s floor and the clay enbankment surrounding the outer walls of the structure. From the outside, it would have originally appeared as a low mound with a tunnel entrance, said William “Bill” Bomar, director of the Moundville Archaeological Park.

In addition to the smoking pipes and pottery fragments, a stone ax head and bits of native copper have been recovered. These and other remains will inform archaeologists about the activities conducted in the lodge by the prehistoric natives of Moundville.

Now in its 23rd year, the Museum Expedition, which began at Moundville June 10 and ends July 7, is one of the few archaeology/ paleontology camps in the country that provides a hands-on, scientific field school to students as young as 14.

Each year, the UA Museum Expedition program embarks on a different site in Alabama to search for the secrets of the state. One-third of this year’s participants are from states other than Alabama, including California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

From A.D. 1000 to 1500, Mississippian Indians constructed large earthworks in Moundville, topped by temples, council houses, and the homes of their nobility. The Moundville Archaeological Park contains more than two dozen of these surviving flat-topped mounds, remnants of a ceremonial and economic center whose trade routes extended across the entire southeastern United States.

At its peak, in about 1250, Moundville was the largest city north of Mexico, home to about 3,000 people. The park, located on the banks of the Black Warrior River 13 miles south of Tuscaloosa, preserves 320 acres of what was once the largest and most powerful prehistoric Native American communities in North America.