Bøger af Darla Spencer

The first Europeans to arrive in the Ohio Valley were intrigued and puzzled by the many conical earthen mounds they encountered there. They created wild theories about who the mysterious "Moundbuilders" might be. It was not until the 1880s that Smithsonian Institution investigations revealed that the Moundbuilders were the ancestors of living Native Americans. More than four hundred mounds have been recorded in West Virginia, including the Grave Creek Mound in Marshall County, the largest conical mound in North America. Join archaeologist Darla Spencer and learn about the Grave Creek Mound and fifteen additional Adena mounds from the fascinating Woodland period in West Virginia.

Once thought of as Indian hunting grounds with no permanent inhabitants, West Virginia is teeming with evidence of a thriving early native population. Today s farmers can hardly plow their fields without uncovering ancient artifacts, evidence of at least ten thousand years of occupation. Members of the Fort Ancient culture resided along the rich bottomlands of southern West Virginia during the Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric periods. Lost to time and rediscovered in the 1880s, Fort Ancient sites dot the West Virginia landscape. This volume explores sixteen of these sites, including Buffalo, Logan and Orchard. Archaeologist Darla Spencer excavates the fascinating lives of some of the Mountain State s earliest inhabitants in search of who these people were, what languages they spoke and who their descendants may be."