Winterville Mounds Park, Greenville, MS 38703

Winterville Mounds, named for a nearby community, is the site of a prehistoric ceremonial center built by a Native American civilization that thrived from about A.D. 1000 to 1450. The mounds, part of the Winterville societys religious system, were the site of
sacred structures and ceremonies. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Winterville people lived away from the mound center on family farms in scattered settlement districts throughout the Yazoo-Mississippi River Delta basin. Only a few of the highest-ranking tribal officials lived at the mound center. The Winterville ceremonial center originally contained at least 23 mounds. Some of the
mounds located outside the park boundaries have been leveled by highway construction and farming. Twelve of the sites largest mounds, including the 55-foot-high Temple Mound, are currently the focus of a long-range preservation plan being developed by the
Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the University of Mississippi Center for Archaeological Research. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Indians who used the Winterville Mounds may have had a civilization similar to that of the Natchez Indians, a Mississippi tribe documented by French explorers and settlers in the early 1700s. The Natchez Indians society was divided into upper and lower ranks, with a persons social rank determined by heredity through the female line. The chief and other tribal officials inherited their positions as members of the royal family. The elaborate leadership network made mound building by a civilian labor force possible.