Craig Mound as it appears today at the site of Spiro in eastern Oklahoma. In the early 1930s, commercial looters tunneled into this mound and discovered a gaping hollow, the tomb-like shell of an intentionally buried mortuary structure. Inside were elaborate special burials and jumbled human bones accompanied by unbelievable quantities of unusual artifacts made of marine shell, exotic stone, bone, copper, feathers, fabrics, fur, and all manner of materials. Photo by Dee Ann Story. In 1933, local entrepreneurs formed the Pocola Mining Company to loot Craig Mound, the sites largest mound. Craig Mound was actually four connected mounds, a large cone-shaped one and three smaller ones. Digging by hand with no real idea of what they were digging into, the looters made relatively slow progress for the first year. They did encountered many graves and offerings in the smaller mounds and these began to appear on the market. This eventually provoked a public outcry and Oklahoma passed one of the first state laws protecting antiquities in 1935. Unfortunately, the looters were able to continue digging secretly and finally struck upon an effective way of getting what they wanted: they hired coal miners to tunnel into the largest cone
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 12:54:53 +0000