West Virginia Division of Culture and History

Presented by The West Virginia Division of society and record

The Mound

The center of web site is just about the most well-known and definitely the largest associated with the Adena Burial piles. An enormous undertaking, the total work required the motion in excess of 60, 000 a great deal of earth. Artifacts and displays interpreting the lifestyle of the Adena people are exhibited inside Delf Norona Museum, adjacent to the 2, 000 yr old mound. The essential impressive and largest Adena mound, Grave Creek Mound may be the largest conical sort of the mound-builder structures. Construction of mound occurred in successive stages from about 250-150 B.C., as suggested by the numerous burials at various levels in the frameworks. In 1838, roadway designers measured its level at 69 foot and its diameter in the base at 295 feet. Initially a moat around 40 legs wide and five foot comprehensive with one causeway encircled it.

The first recorded excavation of this mound took place in 1838, conducted by local amateurs. To achieve entrance to the mound, two horizontal tunnels and another straight shaft had been developed. This led to the most significant breakthrough of two burial vaults.

As well as the Adena ornaments and continues to be found in the interior, top of the vault included a little level sandstone tablet. Later on, authenticity of this tablet therefore the concept of its inscription became quite questionable. Although rock never already been authenticated and contains already been disputed by many specialists, a replica regarding the original is on show in museum.

Grave Creek Archaeological involved in addition preserves a 136-seat theater with a small phase.

The Museum

The Delf Norona Museum exposed in December 1978. The carefully contemporary center, along with its normal brick facade and pyramid-shaped skylights is an architectural tribute to a prehistoric era. Exhibits and displays on upper amount portray and make clear something understood about the social life of this primitive individuals while the building associated with the Grave Creek Mound. We also have the archaeology exhibits that relate to the very early residents associated with area including the very first Homes of West Virginia; the Grave Creek Tablet; The Building of the Mound; The Builders regarding the Mound and which They Were.

Open year-round to site visitors. An interpretive lecture can be obtained to groups with advance reservation and team frontrunners can contact the museum for a summary of hands-on progams.

The museum features something special store and a gallery with changing displays. Admission towards museum is no-cost.

Various other exhibits:

“Ron Hinkle Glass: West Virginia’s present towards the World.”

Marble King: Western Virginia’s Gift towards World

Homer Laughlin China Business: Western Virginia’s Present towards the World

Fashion Dolls of Pete Ballard

(1.34MB Acrobat PDF)

The Adena People

About 1000 B.C. markings the beginning of a duration in North America. Known as the Woodland Period, this period lasted until about 700 A.D. During this time, an innovative new tradition appeared and made considerable settlements in what is known as West Virginia. These people are known to us these days by the general term the Mound Builders, so called for their rehearse of making earthen burial piles alongside earthworks. The Mound Builders existed over a number of from the Atlantic, the Midwest plus the Ohio Valley to your Mississippi Valley. The word "mound builders" means a few cultures that period a period of about 20 hundreds of years.

The first group to build up this original way of living had been the Adena, from about 1000 B.C. to about 1 A.D. They had well-organized communities and lived-in an extensive location including most of present day Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky and areas of Pennsylvania and ny. A later group of Mound Builders, the Hopewell, lived from about 1 A.D. to 700 A.D. and represented a higher refinement within the earlier in the day Adena tradition. Various other cultures extended Mound Builders to about 1300 A.D.

The labour of numerous men and women will need to have been needed to develop these mounds since they didn't use the wheel together with no ponies. The large levels of planet must be relocated because of the basket-load. Maybe that is why, the piles were often made use of more than once. We get in numerous piles you can find multiple burials at different amounts. Eventually the piles gradually increased in proportions.

Most people were cremated after death, placed in small sign tombs and covered with planet. They often times had been buried when you look at the skin and more essential everyone was set to sleep with many different artifacts like flint tools, beads, pipelines and mica and copper ornaments.

Grave Creek Mound is of this late Adena stage and ended up being built in successive stages during a period of a century or more. We do not know why the Adena made a decision to develop this mound on these types of a huge scale compared to other burial piles in your community that generally speaking vary in size from 20 to 300 legs in diameter.

A typical Adena residence ended up being integrated a circular type from 15 to 45 foot in diameter. The walls consisted of paired articles tilted outward, joined to other wood to make a conical-shaped roofing. The roofing ended up being covered with bark plus the wall space was bark, wickerwork or some combo. They certainly were substantial traders as evidenced by the types of, material based in the mounds they built. Copper from the western Great Lakes region and shells through the gulf coast of florida, all confirm the range of the financial task. Besides, the tradition also applied farming, hunting and fishing.

About 500 B.C., the Adena tradition started slowly to give method to an even more sophisticated culture, the Hopewell. Although small remains of these villages, the Adena left great monuments to mark their particular moving, and something of the most useful of those into the Grave Creek Mound.