Thor Heyerdahl KStJ was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer with a background in biology with specialization in zoology, botany and geography.
Silbury Hill is a prehistoric artificial chalk mound near Avebury in the English county of Wiltshire. It is part of the Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites UNESCO World Heritage Site. At 39.3 metres (129 ft) high, the hill is the tallest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe and one of the largest in the world; it is similar in volume to contemporary Egyptian pyramids. The site is in the care of English Heritage.
Savaiʻi is the largest and highest island both in Samoa and in the Samoan Islands chain. The island is also the sixth largest in Polynesia, behind the three main islands of New Zealand and the Hawaiian Islands of Hawaii and Maui. While it is larger than the second main island, Upolu, it is significantly less populated.
The Pinson Mounds comprise a prehistoric Native American complex located in Madison County, Tennessee, in the region that is known as the Eastern Woodlands. The complex, which includes 17 mounds, an earthen geometric enclosure, and numerous habitation areas, was most likely built during the Middle Woodland period. The complex is the largest group of Middle Woodland mounds in the United States. Sauls' Mound, at 72 feet (22 m), is the second-highest surviving mound in the United States.
Monks Mound is the largest Pre-Columbian earthwork in the Americas and the largest pyramid north of Mesoamerica. The beginning of its construction dates from 900 to 955 CE. Located at the Cahokia Mounds UNESCO World Heritage Site near Collinsville, Illinois, the mound size was calculated in 1988 as about 100 feet (30 m) high, 955 feet (291 m) long including the access ramp at the southern end, and 775 feet (236 m) wide. This makes Monks Mound roughly the same size at its base as the Great Pyramid of Giza. The perimeter of its base is larger than the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. As a platform mound, the earthwork supported a wooden structure on the summit.
Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park (8LE1) is one of the most important archaeological sites in Florida, the capital of chiefdom and ceremonial center of the Fort Walton Culture inhabited from 1050–1500. The complex originally included seven earthwork mounds, a public plaza and numerous individual village residences.
Key Marco was an archaeological site (8CR48) consisting of a large shell works island next to Marco Island, Florida. A small pond on Key Marco, now known as the "Court of the Pile Dwellers" (8CR49), was excavated in 1896 by the Smithsonian Institution's Pepper-Hearst Expedition, led by Frank Hamilton Cushing. Cushing recovered more than 1,000 wooden artifacts from the pond, the largest number of wooden artifacts from any prehistoric archaeological site in the eastern United States. These artifacts are described as some of the finest prehistoric Native American art in North America. The Key Marco materials are principally divided between the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania; the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution; and the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida. The original pond was completely excavated and refilled. It is now covered by a housing subdivision. Excavations of small parts of the site were also conducted in 1965 and 1995.
The Marajoara or Marajó culture was an ancient pre-Columbian era culture that flourished on Marajó island at the mouth of the Amazon River in northern Brazil. In a survey, Charles C. Mann suggests the culture appeared to flourish between 800 AD and 1400 AD, based on archeological studies. Researchers have documented that there was human activity at these sites as early as 1000 BC. The culture seems to have persisted into the colonial era.
In archaeology, earthworks are artificial changes in land level, typically made from piles of artificially placed or sculpted rocks and soil. Earthworks can themselves be archaeological features, or they can show features beneath the surface.
The Tall Zira'a is an archaeological tell in Jordan. Surveys and geophysical investigations showed the site's great potential for excavations.
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in common, including linguistic relations, cultural practices, and traditional beliefs. In centuries past, they had a strong shared tradition of sailing and using stars to navigate at night.
Archaeology of Samoa began with the first systematic survey of archaeological remains on Savai'i island by Jack Golson in 1957. Since then, surveys and studies in the rest of Samoa have uncovered major findings of settlements, stone and earth mounds including star mounds, Lapita pottery remains and pre-historic artifacts.
The Falemauga Caves are large natural caverns in a series of lava-tunnels situated in the Tuamasaga district along the central ridge of Upolu island in Samoa. The caves have been studied by archaeologists in Samoa with evidence of human occupation in pre-history. They were also used as a place of refuge by the people of Tuamasaga from Tongan invasion.
Garden Creek site is an archaeological site located 24 miles (39 km) west of Asheville, North Carolina in Haywood County, on the south side of the Pigeon River and near the confluence of its tributary Garden Creek. It is near modern Canton and the Pisgah National Forest. The earliest human occupation at the site dates to 8000 BCE. The 12-acre site features remains of two villages (31Hw7) occupied first in the Woodland period and, most prominently, in the Pisgah phase associated with the South Appalachian Mississippian culture. A total of four earthwork mounds have been found at the site; three have been excavated.
Poverty Point State Historic Site/Poverty Point National Monument is a prehistoric earthwork constructed by the Poverty Point culture, located in present-day northeastern Louisiana. Evidence of the Poverty Point culture extends throughout much of the Southeastern Woodlands of the Southern United States. The culture extended 100 miles (160 km) across the Mississippi Delta and south to the Gulf Coast.
The Swallow Bluff Island Mounds (40HR16) comprise a Mississippian culture archaeological site located near Saltillo on Swallow Bluff Island in the Tennessee River in Hardin County, Tennessee.
Kʼaxob is an archaeological site of the Maya civilization located in Belize. It was occupied from about 800 B.C. to A.D. 900. The site is located in northern Belize in the wetlands of Pulltrouser Swamp in proximity to the Sibun River Valley in central Belize. Research has shown that Kʼaxob was occupied from the Late Preclassic Period to the Early Postclassic Period. This period in time and the site is characterized by specific ceramic types as well as agriculture and an increase in social stratification. Kʼaxob is a village site centered on two pyramid plazas and later grew in size during the Early Classic Period to the Late Classic Period. The site includes a number of household, mounds and plazas. Kʼaxob is mostly based on residential and household living but also has some ritualistic aspects.
Mound 34 is a small platform mound located roughly 400 metres (1,300 ft) to the east of Monks Mound at Cahokia Mounds near Collinsville, Illinois. Excavations near Mound 34 from 2002 to 2010 revealed the remains of a copper workshop, although the one of a kind discovery had been previously found in the late 1950s by archaeologist Gregory Perino, but lost for 60 years. It is so far the only remains of a copper workshop found at a Mississippian culture archaeological site.
Mound 72 is a small ridgetop mound located roughly 850 meters (2,790 ft) to the south of Monks Mound at Cahokia Mounds near Collinsville, Illinois. Early in the site's history, the location began as a circle of 48 large wooden posts known as a "woodhenge". The woodhenge was later dismantled and a series of mortuary houses, platform mounds, mass burials and eventually the ridgetop mound erected in its place. The mound was the location of the "beaded burial", an elaborate burial of an elite personage thought to have been one of the rulers of Cahokia, accompanied by the graves of several hundred retainers and sacrificial victims.
Tomnaverie stone circle is a recumbent stone circle set on the top of a small hill in lowland northeast Scotland. Construction started from about 2500 BC, in the Bronze Age, to produce a monument of thirteen granite stones including a massive 6.5-ton recumbent stone lying on its side along the southwest of the circle's perimeter. Within the 17-metre (56 ft) circle are kerb stones encircling a low 15-metre (49 ft) ring cairn but the cairn itself no longer exists.
