The sacred geography of the American mound builders /

Korp argues that the earthen mounds built by Amerindians in the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys from 1500 BCE to 1200 CE were religious sites where the bodies, bones, and ashes of the dead were interred. Korp attributes the tendency to orient the mounds in an easterly direction to the wish to warm the dead by the sun as it rose in the sky. As Korp explains, the social disruptions caused by death were diminished as the dead remained present to their communities in their sun-warmed, earthen homes. Unlike many overreaching theories about prehistoric Amerindian religion, Korp's arguments are based on every point on a careful assessment of the evidence and its limits. The book includes a good selection of technical illustrations, a very useful bibliography, and an appendix arguing that the incised, pigmented stones found in the Ohio valley, known as the "Adena tablets," were used to paint the bodies of the dead with the preservative red ochre. Recommended for all libraries with collections in Native American archaeology. -A. Porterfield, Syracuse University