Mound 47

Mound 47 is one of the site’s smaller mounds. It was mapped by Patrick as a small, irregularly shaped mound, and he shows lines extending from it to the southeast. The lines appear to represent a garden plot or a small cultivated field. However, Moorehead drew the mound as though the striations represented part of the form, giving it a slightly tilted, comma configuration. Mound 47 appears on many of the early aerial photographs, though today it is buried under the east entrance to a drive-in theater in the area and is indicated only by a slight rise in elevation.

Maps record varying heights for this mound. The earliest, the McAdams Map, indicates that it was 10 feet (3.05 meters) in height; the Thomas Map of 1894, 15 feet (4.6 meters), and the Peterson McAdams Map of 1906, 12 feet (3.7 meters). Based on Patrick’s indication of the mound’s size, these figures seem excessive. The location of Mound 47 seems to be correct and is consistent in all representations. Moorehead suggests that Mound 47 was probably one of the mounds in which the men killed in the explosion at Sawmill Mound (Mound 39) were buried.