Winterville site

The Winterville site (22 WS 500) is a major archaeological site in unincorporated Washington County, Mississippi, north of Greenville and along the river. It consists of major earthwork monuments, including more than twelve large platform mounds and cleared and filled plazas. It is the type site for the Winterville Phase (1200 to 1400) of the Lower Yazoo Basin region of the Plaquemine Mississippian culture. Protected as a state park, it has been designated as a National Historic Landmark. In June 2015 the state authorized $300,000 to restore the mounds to their pre-Columbian condition and add walking trails to the park. The site also includes a museum. Winterville Mounds, named for the nearby town of Winterville, Mississippi, is the site of a prehistoric ceremonial center built by Native Americans of the Plaquemine culture, the regional variation of the Mississippian culture. This civilization thrived from about 1000 to 1450CE. The earthwork mounds, an expression of the Winterville society's religious and political system, were the site of sacred structures and ceremonies. They were built between 1200 and 1250. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Winterville people lived away from the mound center on family farms in scattered settlement districts throughout the Yazoo-Mississippi River Delta basin. Only a few of the higher-ranking tribal officials lived at this mound complex. The Winterville ceremonial center originally contained at least twenty-three platform mounds surrounding several large, filled and smoothed plazas. Some of the mounds located outside current park boundaries were leveled by farming and highway construction before the site became protected as Winterville State Park. Twelve of the site's largest mounds, including the high Temple Mound, are the focus in the early 21st century of a long-range preservation plan being developed by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the University of Mississippi's Center for Archaeological Research.