Moundville — Moundville
Moundville Altairisfar (Jeffrey Reed), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY SA 3.0

Site · United States

Moundville

Mississippian, 1120–1450 CE

Moundville is the second-largest Mississippian centre after Cahokia, with twenty-nine mounds around a plaza on the Black Warrior River, occupied as a fortified town from about 1120 and as a necropolis until 1450. Its art is central to the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex.

CountryUnited States
State / provinceAlabama
Dates1120–1450 CE
StatusArchaeological Park and National Historic Landmark
Managed byUniversity of Alabama Museums
AccessOpen to the public with a museum and mound trail
Coordinates33.006, -87.631 (public site)

What was found

Excavations recovered engraved and painted pottery including the Moundville Engraved types, greenstone celts and palettes, shell gorgets, copper ear spools and pendants, the famous rattlesnake disk and Southeastern Ceremonial Complex imagery. Over three thousand burials were excavated in the 1930s.

Rules

Nothing may be collected, dug, moved or removed at Moundville; it is a protected archaeological site managed by University of Alabama Museums, and taking artifacts, stones or samples is an offence. Federal, state and tribal law, including ARPA and NAGPRA where applicable, protect the site and its burials. Burials from the site are subject to NAGPRA repatriation. This article is for study and context only and is not a collecting locality.

Elsewhere

Cite this article

Stratum Study. "Moundville" (Site). Stratum Study pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-21. https://stratum.black/study/sites/moundville. Accessed 2026-09-21.

@misc{stratum-moundville,
  title        = {Moundville},
  author       = {{Stratum Study}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://stratum.black/study/sites/moundville}},
  year         = {2026},
  note         = {Site article, Stratum Study pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-21; sources: stratum, wikidata, commons. Accessed 2026-09-21.}
}

Citations carry the pack version and the article's as-of date so they resolve to the same text later. The facts themselves belong to the sources listed below; cite those for the science.

Sources for this article: Stratum editorial (Stratum editorial);Wikidata (CC0);Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-4.0). As of 2026-09-21; Study pack 2026.09. Data reproduced under the licences shown; text in Stratum's own words unless a section names its source.

Found an error? Write to drew@tyr.ac with the article id site:moundville.

Stratum is the inventory, provenance and certificate system for fossil, mineral and shell collections. Study is its open reference: every fact cites its source, and the credits page lists each one with its licence.