Great Mound

The Great Mound is a massive Native American mound in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. Located in Section 19 of Madison Township in Butler County, it has a height of 43 feet (13 m) and a circumference of 511 feet (156 m). Its total volume is nearly 825,000 cubic feet (23,400 m3), making it the largest mound in Butler County and one of the largest in southwestern Ohio. Because of the mound's height and its placement on a ridgeline, an individual at the summit can see for a great distance. In the late nineteenth century, it was theorized that mounds such as the Great Mound were built as observation or watch points, and that the builders maintained the ability to light fires atop the mounds as a method of communicating across wide distances. The potential of these mounds for long-distance communication was demonstrated in 1990 by three groups of volunteers. After climbing the Great Mound, the first group established visual contact with the Hill-Kinder Mound in Franklin (more than 11 miles (18 km) to the northeast), from which point the observers of the second group contacted the third group atop the Miamisburg Mound near Dayton. Built by the Adena culture, the Great Mound has been reduced by multiple instances of unofficial diggings. In 1879, locals removed a small portion of the mound's summit, finding artifacts such as bones and the remnants of fires. Lat

Archaeological site data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).