Nighttime at Kolomoki Mounds State Historic Park. The field school walks blindly through the woods. Thick foliage overhead obscures any light, but the walk is short. They quickly break the line of trees and emerge onto a gravel path. The silhouette of Mound A looms skyward. They climb its massive staircase. Silence falls over the group as they step on top of the mound.
To stand on Mound A at night is spiritual. The rim of the plaza below fades into the horizon, farther than the eye can make. The field school slowly gazes upward, to the treetops level with their sight. Their heads tilt back toward the stars wheeling overhead. There is a cosmic order here, and every person feels it.
The Kolomoki Mounds were largely occupied from C.E. 350-750, well before the acme of platform mound construction and use (best known from the Mississippian era) in the Southeastern United States. Nonetheless, this site was once the seat of immense power in the region. Maybe this power carried down through the centuries, remembered in stories told around fires. Maybe this power even impacted the lives of the very people who lived where the field school is now excavating.
The next weekend, the field school travels to the Ocmulgee National Monument near Macon, Georgia. They wander through the site’s museum. There is something uncanny in seeing dioramas full of things the field school has already learned about its site. Behind a glass partition they see a miniature depiction of the Green Corn ceremony. Thoughts of Feature I and the trash pit rush forward immediately.
The next weekend, the field school travels to the Ocmulgee National Monument near Macon, Georgia. They wander through the site’s museum. There is something uncanny in seeing dioramas full of things the field school has already learned about its site. Behind a glass partition they see a miniature depiction of the Green Corn ceremony. Thoughts of Feature I and the trash pit rush forward immediately.
The field school walks outside the museum to the recreated earth lodge. They recall Unit 17 and their own stories of a possible earth lodge that once circulated through camp. Upon seeing the reconstructed lodge, however, they immediately see why Unit 17 could never have housed one – was there evidence of a clay floor? Massive timbers which supported the roof? Vindicated, they move on toward Mound A, hazy in the distance.
Mound A at Ocmulgee is no less impressive than Mound A at Kolomoki. What the field school experiences here, however, is not the speechless awe they felt at Kolomoki. Rather, they feel a sense of completeness. They’ve now experienced a history of the region, from the story of the Apalachee region, to the grand tale of power and statehood told between Kolomoki and Ocmulgee.
-Allen Luethke and Kelly Teboe
-Allen Luethke and Kelly Teboe