Spiro Mounds

Spiro Mounds (34 LF 40) is an archaeological site located in present-day eastern Oklahoma that remains from an indigenous Indian culture that was part of the major northern Caddoan Mississippian culture. The 80-acre site is located within a floodplain on the southern side of the Arkansas River. The modern town of Spiro developed approximately seven miles to the south. Between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, the local indigenous people created a powerful religious and political center, culturally linked to the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex identified by anthropologists as the Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere (MIIS). Spiro was a major western outpost of Mississippian culture, which dominated the Mississippi Valley and its tributaries for centuries. In the 1930s during the Great Depression, treasure hunters bought the rights to tunnel into Craig Mound—the second-largest mound on the site—to mine it for artifacts. Without concern for scientific research, they exposed a hollow burial chamber inside the mound, a unique feature containing some of the most extraordinary pre-Columbian artifacts ever found in the United States. The treasure hunters sold the artifacts they recovered to art collectors, some as far away as Europe. The artifacts included works of fragile, perishable materials: textiles and feathers that had been uniquely preserved in the conditions of the closed chamber. Later, steps were taken to protect the site. This site has been significant for North American archaeology since the 1930s, especially due to its many preserved textiles and a wealth of shell carving. Later, some of the artifacts sold by treasure hunters were returned to regional museums and the Caddo Nation, but many artifacts from the site have never been accounted for. Since the late twentieth century, the Spiro Mounds site has been protected by the Oklahoma Historical Society and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.