Template:Did you know nominations/Pyramid Mound

Pyramid Mound

 * ... that Pyramid Mound (pictured) in the U.S. state of Indiana really isn't a mound?
 * Reviewed: Paola Barrientos
 * Comment: ALT1 "... that Pyramid Mound (pictured) in the U.S. state of Indiana is actually a natural hill, not a mound?"
 * Comment: If you have access to the journal Geoarchaeology, you can find the article by going to its DOI, 10.1002/(SICI)1520-6548(199810)13:7<649::AID-GEA1>3.0.CO;2-6. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to link the article directly (some of the characters in the DOI cause coding problems with linking), so we'll have to settle for an unlinked citation unless you can figure it out.  Never mind; the helpful people at WP:HD showed me how to link it.  Nyttend (talk) 00:45, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Created/expanded by Nyttend (talk). Self nom at 01:54, 2 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Love the hook! Article is new on 2 November, well-formatted, and auto-notable because it describes a nationally registered historic place. I was a little hesitant to proceed with the hook fact as is, due to the key article's treatment of the Pyramid Mound specifically:
 * "Information about Pyramid Mound is more anecdotal, though it is reported to have a sand core (Smith, 1921), and is located in the same landscape position as Sugar Loaf. Again the size of the loess cone is strikingly similar to Sugar Loaf at some 9 m high (determined from USGS quadrangle) and 91.5 m east - west and 45.7 m north - south (Lilly 1937:76). As with other features, the long axis is oriented with the prevailing winds from the west."
 * Doesn't seem definitive. But then the article concludes: "Three other loess cones described here exhibit a similar size, form, structure, and landscape position which suggests similar eolian formation processes were involved." This might be good enough but it would be a lot better to find another source or two that confirms the shocking truth that the Pyramid Mound is not a mound! Also I think parts of the above could be quoted in footnotes for the curious reader who can't get behind the paywall. <3, groupuscule (talk) 04:02, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, you overlooked the definitive statement: please read between the lines that you quoted. You'll see "Geomorphological analysis of Sugar Loaf Mound indicates...that the mounds are not cultural in origin".  In other words, they weren't produced by any archaeological culture at all, and this is reinforced by its placement just one sentence after a comment about people originally thinking that the hills "were artificial mounds".  Nyttend (talk) 07:04, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * "Geomorphological analysis of Sugar Loaf Mound indicates that Woodfordian-age sandy and silty loess overlies the Sangamon Geosol developed in Illinoian-age till and that the mounds are not cul[t]ural in origin." Took a minute to parse but it does seem to be more support for generalizing the conclusion to all the mounds. Reading this sentence, the abstract, and the above quotations together convince me that Prof. Stafford did mean to argue that the evidence from Sugar Loaf Mound was good enough for Pyramid Mound. I'm a little bit torn about whether this falls under "established facts that are unlikely to change", since it's just one article and I'm having trouble finding other scholarly literature on the topic. Now, the article as written currently states "Accounts published in the 1970s and 1998 concluded that Pyramid and comparable sites nearby were actually natural loess hills that Indians of the Woodland period chose to use as cemeteries". Can we dig up one or more of the 1970s articles that would help make the case a little better? Alternatively, perhaps a hook saying that the Pyramid Mound "probably isn't a mound". groupuscule (talk) 18:20, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * [Summary: Unnecessary]. This is a comparatively unimportant site, and it's not been extensively published except in the 19th-century local histories that obviously aren't reliable for current archaeological conclusions.  What's more, much of the recent content isn't publicly available — the 1970s papers that are mentioned on page 668 include Curtis Tomak's MA thesis, and papers of this sort are grey literature and carefully kept at the Glenn Black Lab's research library, which even archaeological professionals can't use without jumping through lots of hoops (I learned this when talking with an IU archaeologist).  Basically, Stafford is saying that Tomak, James H. Kellar, and others are considering Pyramid to be natural.  The whole subject of the Stafford article is the group of "mounds" that includes 12K4, and since it's seemingly the only publicly available source on 12K4 that discusses current understandings of its status, we shouldn't make the article or the hook sound as if contemporary scholars held other major viewpoints about the site.  Nyttend (talk) 02:52, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, I appreciate this explanation and find it convincing. There would be no reason to publish this same finding over and over for each "mound". And I agree that the conclusion isn't (or doesn't seem to be) controversial.
 * Symbol confirmed.svg Primary hook good to go. groupuscule (talk) 03:12, 4 November 2012 (UTC)