Norton Mound Group: Hopewell Earthworks in Michigan

Site at a Glance

Rating

★4.8

Popularity

Very Low

Country

United States

Primary era

Classical

External website

Open ↗

Eras represented

Classical

Civilizations

Unclassified

Site type

Burial

Remains

Necropolis

History

Norton Mound Group is a Hopewell archaeological site in Wyoming, Michigan, United States, near the Grand River. It was a center of Hopewellian culture, a prehistoric North American tradition associated with earthworks, ceremonial practices, burials, long-distance exchange, and distinctive crafted objects, from approximately 400 BC to AD 400. The mounds were probably built during the first century AD and are regarded as the most important and best-preserved group of Hopewell mounds in the western Great Lakes region.

Hopewellian Use

The site formed part of a wider regional tradition expressed through earthworks, burial practices, and carefully made objects. It formerly belonged to a larger grouping that also included the Converse Mounds near present-day downtown Grand Rapids. Those mounds were destroyed during nineteenth-century urban expansion.

Excavation and Protection

W. L. Coffinbury excavated the mounds in 1874 and found numerous burials with rich grave offerings. H. E. Sargent carried out further excavations in 1915, while James B. Griffin investigated mound-construction methods in 1963 and 1964. The name Norton Mounds comes from Captain A. N. Norton, who owned the property during the nineteenth century.

In 1936, Mrs. W. B. Stiles deeded land containing many of the mounds to the City of Grand Rapids, which made it a city park. The site entered the Michigan Register of Historic Sites in 1957, became a National Historic Landmark in 1965, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. Severe erosion, flooding, and nearby development have threatened the group, and a Cultural Landscape Management Plan assessing its condition was completed in February 2007. The Grand Rapids Public Museum protects the site.

Remains

Layout and Construction

The approximately 55-acre site lies between Indian Mounds Drive and Interstate 196 near the Grand River. Coffinbury counted 17 mounds in 1874, and they were assigned the letters A through Q in 1936. The three largest stand near the river, while the others form a curved line behind them. By 1963, eleven of the seventeen mounds remained substantially untouched. The surviving examples range from about 30 feet in diameter and 1.5 feet high to 100 feet in diameter and 15 feet high.

Each mound was formed in successive layers. Black earth covered the base, followed by ash probably produced by leafy branches, a cap of mound fill, and a final covering of natural sod. These layers preserve the construction process within the surviving earthworks.

Burial Features and Finds

Shallow, rectangular burial pits lie beneath the mound layers and are generally below ground level. Mound M is different in form, because its burial chambers rise above the level of the surrounding ground. Human remains were placed in and around these pits with burial goods that included jars, cups, dishes, spoons, arrowheads, pipes, tools, beads, pearls, and shell objects.

Excavations also produced Hopewell pottery from Mound M, burial utensils, ornaments, work-kit objects, and geometric engravings made from turtle carapaces. Together, these finds reveal the range of objects associated with burial activity at the mound group.