Serpent Mound

Abstract

This chapter explores the second major element of the marker design, which called for a massive earthen berm, supported by citing mounds of the US Midwest, including Monk’s Mound at Cahokia and the Great Serpent Mound. It explores how the engineering knowledge needed to construct these mounds is underestimated by the markers’ experts, and how the archaeological sites treated as simple actually have complex histories of development, including repair and changes. It relates the dismissive treatment of this indigenous technology to earlier commentaries that questioned the creation of earthworks by Native Americans. It explores the concept of common sense and the kinds of expert opinion that were represented in the history of developing proposals for markers, and the special role given to meaning in identifying appropriate archaeological models to use. It is followed by an interlude considering Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty as a model for a monumental earthwork subject to entropy.