This month we will take a look at two lost cities, both of which lie in North America. I have visited each, as well as the sites mentioned in an earlier column, Along the Banks of the Mighty Mississippi. This article meshes nicely with that one, and provides a set of lost cities, an entire neighborhood of ruins, for you gaming enjoyment. Both are easily accessible to the general public, except as where noted (some areas are only open to those who know someone in the Park Service). In other words, these two sites are 'lost' but have been found, and can be found again by the intrepid and daring.

Mound City

Before the Mississippians there were other mound building cultures in the Ohio River basin. The most recent, the Hopewell culture (200B.C.E. to 500 C.E.) left behind several large earthen mound complexes throughout the Lower Midwest (one lies just north of Indianapolis). These mounds served multiple purposes, and are distinct from the mounds built by the latter Mississippians. All are geometric in shape, being ovals, circles, squares, and other forms. They were constructed using hand tools and making intelligent use of local soils, blending or layering to achieve maximum stability. Some of the mounds may be linked to astronomical observations, making them observatories of a sort, and often these are found in groups. To lay out a set of large earthen mounds in order to align them with celestial events is a remarkable feat. Others, and sometimes also used for observations, contain burials or charnel houses. A charnel house is a room inside the mound formed where a structure was used for the preparation of the dead, and then often burned before being buried by tons of soil.

These mounds differ greatly from the Mississippian mounds in that the structure were not part of an inhabited settlement. That some sort of habitation occurred in association with the mounds are evident, workers and users of the structures needed to live, eat, and sleep somewhere. However, nothing permanent was ever constructed. Indeed, the Hopewell culture built their villages elsewhere, often near bodies of water.

What makes Mound City interesting is that it is not one or a handful of mounds, but twenty-three mounds of varying shapes and sizes, constructed in five groups over an area of a few square miles. As such it is the largest grouping of Hopewell mounds, and indeed one of the largest groupings of earthen mounds in the world. All of the mounds contained charnel house burials, as well as grave goods that hail from as far away as Colorado, Ontario, and Florida. I found the place airy, bright, and a little unnerving. The mounds loom on every side and one cannot walk around without the feeling of their surrounding mass.

The Serpent Mound and Fort Ancient

Located on a bluff some distance from the Ohio River, the Great Serpent Mound presents a lost city that is not a city at all, and that indeed appears to have not been inhabited on a regular basis. It consists of a 1,330-foot long, three-foot high effigy mound that forms either a snake or a comet, depending on the interpretation (I tend towards a snake because I think its cooler). Whichever way you see it, it is a curvilinear mound of earth constructed for unknown purposes. In the serpent's mouth is a round formation that may be the sun, an egg (the egg of the world), or perhaps some other ovoid body. In sum, there are four major coils, with the tail forming a loose spiral. Outlying mounds near the head may be horns, but they do not connect to the main body (though they may have once done so). The whole thing is clearly visible from a tree, so put your ancient aliens clap trap right out (unless it makes a good story, than go right ahead).

The mound appears to have been constructed circa 1070 C.E. (give or take a half century) and possibly by the Fort Ancient culture. The Fort Ancient culture presents a fine example for the use of lost cities. They themselves did not build the earthwork site they inhabited, but occupied and refurbished an earlier site constructed by the Hopewell culture. There is some debate as to rather or not the Great Serpent Mound was constructed earlier by the Adena culture, and that the Fort Ancient culture came in and appropriated the mound, possibly expanding or refurbishing it, for their own use.

The mound itself hints at use as an observatory of sorts, though the ancient feature as astronomical observatory theory is very popular and may be over applied (honestly, you can't seem to find a mysterious structure the world over that is not theorized as having been an observatory at some point). There are claims that some of the curves of the serpent match lunar and solar events, as well as some theories that suggest the mound is tied to Haley's Comet or the explosion of the Crab Nebula. It would not take much work to put some Mythos elements in to the Serpent Mound, serpent folk and Yig being the most obvious. Perhaps the effigy is meant to keep some nasty chained away from our universe, or it could be the focus of horrid worship and a debased human-serpent folk hybrid cult. The surrounding area is rather hilly, difficult to get to, off the beaten path, and covered in woods. I experienced a strong sense of foreboding when I last visited, though this may have been the uncommonly cool fall weather. For reasons I still do not fathom, I did go so far as to have the overhead plan of the mound tattooed on my left forearm, though its lines do not quite match up, and there are extra parts that I do not recall from my visit to the site.

Fort Ancient culture inhabited their segment of the Ohio Valley for nearly eight hundred years beginning in 1000C.E. They constructed small villages, practiced maize-bean-squash agriculture, and constructed small platform mounds. They likely were the descendants of the Hopewell culture, but were heavily influenced by the adjacent Mississippians (covered in detail in my column Along the Banks of the Mighty Mississippi). The culture is named for its central ceremonial and defensive site, Fort Ancient in present day Ohio, on the Little Miami River. This site was originally constructed by the Hopewell culture, but the Fort Ancient occupied, refurbished, and expanded it. The site is highly defensible, sitting on a bluff above the river, and was surrounded by a ditch (oddly inside the walls), and earthen ramparts. There are some astronomical alignments that suggest use as an observatory (again?), as well as four stone capped mounds in one corner that may have calendarical uses. The presence of the ditches inside the walls has been used to argue that Fort Ancient was not meant as a defensive location, however the needs of the culture for defense are evident, and the site could easily have been used for that purpose (though the ditches on the inside might suggest to the gamer that the walls were meant to keep something in). The Fort Ancient villages were walled affairs constructed with defense in mind. They no doubt were prey to the depredations of their neighbors, and at this time the Mississippians were expanding into the area. If you need a fort, and the only one you have at hand has ditches on the inside, well, you use it. Being a fortification does not in anyway negate its use for ceremonial purposes, or as a gathering point for merchants, festivals, and other non-military uses. It is my opinion, after visiting the site, that it could easily have been fortified if needed, and that this would be a factor in deciding to put the energy and time into refurbishing and expanding it.

Using Mound City and Fort Ancient

There are many, many ways these lost cities can be used. The most obvious is in combination with other mound building cultures of the Lower Midwest to form a comprehensive set of ruins and abandoned cities (beyond the later Mississippians there are also the even earlier Adena). By taking a map of Hopewell, Fort Ancient, and other sites, one can form all manner of connections; lay lines, even the basis for a fantasy, post-apocalyptic, or sci-fi campaign. My preferred use is to make these the basis for a Call of Cthulhu or similar campaign, with the mounds having been used to in different manners and by different cultures to either contain or summon the Great Old Ones. Another one is to base a series of dungeon crawls (after taking a little dramatic license by adding dungeons) to your map of Mound Builder sites, yielding a set of linked ruins that can provide hints and clues to the next, great mysteries to uncover, and deadly monsters or trap to overcome. One need not even use the cultures that built these as part of your model, basing whatever non-human or pre-human race's constructions on these mounds. They can be a strange alien temple spread across hundreds of miles of open terrain, a puzzle for your intrepid explorers. Using lessons form the histories of the mounds themselves, one can easily see how lost cities can be present problems for treasure hunting PCs. Taking the Hopewell and Fort Ancient as examples, your heroes can uncover a lost city that contains clues to multiple habitations over a great span of period, habitations that may not be linked in culture, language, or lifestyle. Throw in the Adena and Mississippians into the example, and you are faced with multiple cultures over millennia who constructed similar structures for differing purposes. Sorting all these bits of evidence out can be a great amount of fun, especially if deciding who built this mound is critical to avoiding a nasty death.

I hope I haven't piled up too much information on mounds this month, and I hope to see you next month for another Bit of History.

I have two shameless plugs this month. First, Frog God Games has released my adventure Death in the painted Canyons for both Pathfinder Fantasy Roleplaying and Swords and Wizardry. Finally, Skirmisher Publishing has a preview article for my upcoming military space opera game, Interplanetary in its GenCon Special Editon of dInfinity, "Things That Go Bump on the Spaceship". This article will also appear in Issue 3 of dInfinity.