Earthworks of Eastern North America
Serpent
Mound State Memorial, a Photo Gallery
Serpent Mound, one of the most noted effigy mounds in North America,
is located
on State Route 73 near Locust Grove, Adams County, Ohio. The earthwork
winds along a ridgetop for about a quarter mile.
The serpent has a coiled tail at
the upper end and open maws at the lower end, as if about to
swallow the oval mound.
The oval mound has variously been interpreted as a egg and the
sun about to be swallowed by an eclipse. The mound points in the
direction of summer solstice sunset.
Ancient Monuments
Placemarks
includes more Squier and Davis
Ancient Monuments survey map
overlays for Hopewell sites.
Archaeologists in 1991 opened a trench first
cut by the Putnam excavaton in the late 1800s
and recovered organic materials from the undisturbed edge of
the trench. Radiocarbon dating placed construction
at about 900 years ago, over a millenia later than once thought
based on association with the nearby Adena burial mounds (image
below).
Next below is the tail of the serpent with the GPS
receiver along the west edge.
Serpent
Mound sits within an oblong crater where a massive extraterrestrial
object collided with the earth.
The crater overlaps Adams, Pike and Highland counties, and the mound
is near the
five-mile-across crater's southwest
edge.
The topography around Serpent
Mound is jumbled, and impact theory explains why for many geologists.
Boreholes samples show microscopic cracks in quartz crystals and horsetail-shaped
fracture shatter cones, patterns resembling nuclear reactions. Iridium
is high in the area.
One
of the burial mounds near Serpent Mound.
Serpent Mound GPS-determined coordinates.
smbm
Serpent Mound Burial Mound
39.023806
-83.428958
smom
Serpent Mound Oval Mound
39.026458
-83.431083
smta
Serpent Mound Tail
39.025194
-83.430778
The Oval Mound at Serpent Mound is situated
precisely one degree west of Newark Circle while the longitude
difference with Newark Octagon equals circumference/365.
Map reoriented to accurate north.
Click for larger map.