These large, flat-topped ceremonial platforms were used as temples and burial places. Platform mounds, originally constructed as bases for public buildings, houses of leaders, and temples, date from the period of 800 A.D. Spaced around a plaza, they formed the central portions of important communities. Early French settlers saw the use of mounds for public buildings and burials by the Natchez Indians. Return
Enormous piles of earth erected by the Indians of the central United States, the so-called Mound Builders, as a grave and/or base for a temple or other structure. Sometimes in the form of an animal.