Serpent Mound
Interesting facts
- Serpent Mound is considered the first privately funded archaeological preserve in the United States, thanks to Putnam's fundraising in the 1880s.
- Some archaeologists have speculated that Halley's Comet, which blazed across the sky in 1066, may have inspired a serpent built around 1070 CE.
- The open jaws of the serpent nearly enclose a hollow oval about 120 feet (37 m) long, which early surveyors read as an egg.
- In the 19th century some Christians believed the earthen serpent marked the location of the Garden of Eden.
- Brad Lepper argued the older radiocarbon dates came from organic sediment in soil cores, which can read as much as 3,000 years too old.
- Digging in 2011 uncovered a Fort Ancient ash bed dated between 1041 and 1211 CE, showing the burial area was reused centuries after the Adena.
- Excavations at the site have turned up Hopewell pipes and earspools alongside Adena gorgets and projectile points.
- The impact structure beneath the mound was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1980, and its odd terrain may have influenced the choice of site.
- Similar serpent effigies are known elsewhere, including Serpent Mounds Park in Ontario and a site at Skelmorlie in Scotland.
Why it is worth it
On a wooded bluff above Ohio Brush Creek, a low ridge of earth winds for 1,348 feet (411 m) in the shape of a snake: a head at one end, open-jawed around an oval, a body thrown into a series of curves, and a tail wound into a tight triple coil. Serpent Mound is the largest known serpent effigy anywhere in the world. The earthwork is mostly yellowish clay and ash capped with rock and soil, from about 9 inches to more than 3 feet high and some 22 to 24 feet wide, and it follows the line of the ridge it sits on.
Who built it, and when, is still argued. Charcoal from a trench re-excavated in 1996 pointed to the Fort Ancient culture around 1070 CE; later radiocarbon work in 2014 and 2019 proposed an Adena origin around 300 BCE, with a rebuilding in about 1100 CE. The archaeologist Brad Lepper has questioned those older dates, noting that the Adena are not known to have built effigy mounds, while Fort Ancient people often depicted serpents. Nearby conical burial mounds of the Adena culture show that the bluff was used for burials over many centuries. Interpretations range widely: Squier and Davis, who published the first survey in 1848, saw a serpent swallowing an egg, while Lepper has linked the figure to a Siouan origin story of a great serpent of the underworld. In 1987 researchers suggested that the head aligns with the summer solstice sunset and the coiled tail with the winter solstice sunrise, though the sight lines are too short to prove it.
The setting is unusual in its own right. The mound sits on the Serpent Mound crater, a disturbed geological structure about 14 km wide created between 252 and 330 million years ago, most likely by an impact, its rim long since worn away. When ploughing threatened the earthworks in the 1880s, Frederic Ward Putnam of Harvard's Peabody Museum raised money from a group of Boston women led by Alice C. Fletcher, bought 60 acres in 1886, excavated the site and restored the mounds. The land passed to the state historical society in 1900, which built an observation tower over the serpent. Today the Ohio History Connection looks after the site, a National Historic Landmark since 1966.
Getting there
The mound lies near Peebles in Adams County, southern Ohio. The nearest city is Portsmouth, about 50 km away. The nearest airport is Rickenbacker International (LCK) near Columbus, about 98 km away in a straight line.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Great Serpent Mound is a 1,348-feet-long (411m), four-feet-high precontact effigy mound located in Peebles, Ohio, United States. It was built on what is known as the Serpent Mound crater plateau, running along the Ohio Brush Creek in Adams County, Ohio. The mound is the largest serpent effigy known in the world.
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