The Mound Builders

Who raised the great mounds of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and why were they abandoned? Earthworks still hold their secrets. In The Mound Builders, J. P. MacLean brings the measured curiosity of a nineteenth-century investigator to a landscape written in soil and stone. Part archaeology history monograph, part local history research, it traces what was then known of prehistoric North American mounds and native American earthworks, weighing traditions, early finds, and the physical evidence visible along rivers, terraces, and fields. The heart of the book is his close attention to Butler County Ohio archaeology, set against the wider sweep of Ohio Valley prehistory and Mississippi Valley archaeology. Read today, it remains a classic archaeology study: a window into antiquarian American archaeology and into the questions that shaped mound builders archaeology for generations. For readers who enjoy primary sources, it offers Indian mound excavation reports and careful observation without modern filters; for general readers, it delivers a vivid sense of place and the enduring pull of the unknown. MacLean writes as plough and progress levelled many earthworks, and his notes preserve details generations would struggle to recover. The result is a narrative you can follow and a tool for comparison. Out of print for decades and now republished by Alpha Editions. Restored for today's and future generations. More than a reprint -- a collector's item and a cultural treasure, and a dependable scholarly reference book for anyone building a personal library of early American archaeology and regional history, collectors included.