Grave Creek was one of North America’s most curious monuments, which was once surrounded by a moat within a vast complex of now lost burial mounds and earthworks. The Grave Creek Mound, also known as Mammoth Mound, is regarded as the largest earthwork created by the Adena culture, 600 BCE to 100 CE, of the middle Ohio River Valley.
Not long after the Grave Creek Mound was constructed, the Adena culture began to slowly assimilate into the more sophisticated Hopewell culture. Unlike the irregular shape of Hopewell mounds, which were usually assembled all at once, Adena mounds were symmetrical in shape and built up in stages over time.
Adena mounds began as ground-level graves covered with a slight dirt hill. Successive burials were made on top of the original mound, again covered with soil, so that over the decades a sizable mound was constructed with several layers of graves. The two largest burial mounds in North America are Miamisburg Mound in Miamisburg, Ohio, and Grave Creek Mound in Moundsville, West Virginia.
Both were massive undertakings, requiring the movement of more than 60,000 tons, 54,420,000 kg, or some three million basket loads, of earth. Grave Creek Mound is of the late Adena Culture Period and was built in successive stages over a period of 100 years or more from about 250 to 150 BCE. It is not known why the Adena chose to build this particular mound on such a huge scale compared with other burial mounds in the area, all of which generally range in size from 20 to 300 feet, 6 to 90 m in diameter.
The Grave Creek Mound was originally 65 feet, 19.5 meters tall with an outer circumference of 910 feet, 273 meters. Adding to the mystery was the discovery of a moat with a south-facing causeway accessing the mound. The moat had been about 40 feet, 12 meters wide and five feet deep, encircling the Grave Creek Mound, which was buried over in 1838 when the mound was excavated. Grave Creek Mound is remarkably similar in design to the prehistoric earthen Silbury Hill, moat, and causeway located at Avebury, England.
Although little remains of their villages, the Adena left grand monuments to mark their passing, and one of the greatest of these is the Grave Creek Mound. Grave Creek /Wound was constructed in successive stages, as indicated by the multiple burials at different levels within the structure. In one of these tombs, the Grave Creek Tablet was found with an enigmatic script, deciphered to be Iberian in the Punic language.
The first recorded excavation of the mound took place in 1838, conducted by local amateurs. To gain entrance into the mound, two long shafts were dug, one vertical and one horizontal. The tunnels led to the discovery of two log burial vaults, one situated directly over the other.
Another horizontal shaft dug from the outer base of the mound revealed 10 skeletons in sitting positions, and masses of charcoal, including cremated human bones. The first chamber was discovered at a depth of 60 feet, 18 meters, while the second was found at the 77-foot, 23-meter level, that is 12 feet, 3.6 meters below the “bottom” of the mound itself.
The subsurface log chamber was found covered by stone slabs. A male and female skeleton were recovered along with mica sheets, copper ornaments, and nearly 700 shell beads. A single male skeleton wearing copper arm rings and various ornaments was found in the upper vault, which also contained a flat sandstone disk inscribed with an ancient Semitic script.
The Grave Creek Tablet is a small inscribed stone, about 1 7/8″ 4.8 cm wide, and 1 1/2″ 3.6 cm high. The reverse side was not inscribed. Ever since its discovery, the tablet has created quite a stir in historic and archaeological circles, with most academics casually dismissing it as a hoax. In 1976, Harvard professor and epigrapher Barry Fell declared the tablet to be genuine. Fell professed that its symbols derive from an ancient Punic, or Phoenician, alphabet used on the Iberian Peninsula during the first millennium BCE.
At the time of the Grave Creek stone’s discovery in 1838, the script had not yet been deciphered by any scholar, and thus could not have been a forgery. Notwithstanding the heated controversy over a rune-like text associated with Celtic Europeans, the find was well documented and indicates that the Adena were either a literate people or had strong cultural ties with seafaring Europeans.
The Iberian translation of the inscription is as follows: “The mound raised on high for Tasach this tile His queen caused to be made.” The inscription is an exchange of greetings from the Queen of a Celtic culture to the east and the king of the local Adena nation. Other similar Grave Creek stones written in ancient Celtic / Punic have been found in the area, but none so conclusively known to come from a dateable burial mound such as Grave Creek.
The real historical anomaly is the presence of Semitic inscriptions in ancient American tombs. The town of Moundsville adopted the name from the multitude of burial mounds in the vicinity when the town was founded in the late 1700s. Grave Creek Mound was the largest of 47 mounds within the city limits of Moundsville, which included other elaborate earthworks, now lost.
The only known shaped earthwork was a 5-acre 2-ha octagon near the bank of the Ohio River, also ruined by centuries of farming and development. Grave Creek Mound is all that survives today, the last remnant of a massive Adena necropolis of sorts. Some in town claim it was the ghosts of the ancient mounds who were responsible for the plague of hauntings to beset the town in the 20th century. Many strange phenomena have been recorded in Moundsville, including frequent UFO sightings, Men In Black, phantom cars on the road late at night, and mysterious interference with telephones and televisions.
A period of bizarre events culminated in 1966 when a huge winged man with glowing red eyes called Mothman haunted Moundsville. The unearthly entity was said to take off straight up in the air without using its wings and would chase cars near the Chief Cornstalk Hunting Grounds, the location of an abandoned World War II ammunition dump.
Mothman would emit a loud squeaking noise like a gigantic mouse and utterly terrify all who encountered him. Most of the observers of the Mothman sightings were killed in an unsettling accident when a bridge spanning the Ohio River collapsed.
Visitor guide of Grave Creek Mound:
The most significant prehistoric monument in West Virginia is situated in the quiet, middle-class town of Moundsville, near the Ohio River. Moundsville is conveniently located 15 minutes south of Wheeling, on the northern arm of West Virginia between Ohio and Pennsylvania. Grave Creek Mound State Park and Delf Norona Museum are located just east of Route 2 on Jefferson Avenue. Artifacts and exhibits interpreting the lifestyle of the Adena people are displayed in the museum, adjacent to the 2,200-year-old mound.
The Iberian translation of the Grave Creek Tablet is featured in an exhibit about the stone at the Delf Norona Museum. An entrance fee is required for the museum and access to the trail leading to the top of the mound.
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