A visit to Town Creek Indian Mound offers a glimpse of pre-Columbian life in Piedmont North Carolina. The visitor center contains interpretive exhibits, as well as audiovisual programs that bring alive a rich cultural heritage from the buried past. Self-guided tours of the rebuilt structures and mound and other group activities are available.
Town Creek State Historic Site has been the focus of a consistent program of archaeological research under one director for more than half a century. Research and education are both equally important at Town Creek.
For more than a thousand years, Indians lived an agricultural life on the lands that became known as North Carolina. About the 11th century A.D., a new cultural tradition emerged in the Pee Dee River Valley. That new culture, called "Pee Dee" by archaeologists gave rise to complex societies. These inhabitants built earthen mounds for their spiritual and political leaders, engaged in widespread trade, supported craft specialists, and celebrated a new kind of religion.
Pee Dee culture represents a regional expression of South Appalachian Mississippian culture that interacted and evolved with other centers located throughout the Southeast. Indians of the Pee Dee culture established a political and ceremonial center on a low bluff overlooking the confluence of Town Creek and Little River. In addition to being a major habitation spot, the Town Creek site served as a place for discussion of matters important to the collective clans of the tribe. In this way, it was the setting for significant religious ceremonies and feasts, which often lasted several days. There many socially high-ranking members of the tribe lived, died, and were buried.
The burial house on site now is a round reconstruction of a burial house built on this location over 600 years ago. The size and shape of the building were based on evidence gained through scientific archaeological excavation. The outer walls were made of upright posts covered with wattle and daub. The roof was made of poles lashed together and covered with straw thatching on the outside, and river cane on the inside. A small central hearth provided light and warmth for visitors to the burial house. Other similar structures may have been located within the stockaded walls. Each clan or extended family group may have had its own burial hut.
A temple is reconstructed here as well.
Text source: Town Creek website
Image by Dincher - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10675465