Native Americans, Archaeologists, and the Mounds

Ever since European settlers stumbled upon the eighteenth-century mounds, explanations and interpretations of them – often ridiculous and seldom Native American – have appeared as sober scholarship. Today, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA) has intensified the debate over who «owns» the mounds – modern descendants of the Mound builders or Western archaeologists. Native Americans, Archaeologists, and the Mounds is the first cogent look at all the is…