The Mississippian Culture was a loosely organized trading, religious, and political system that included many language groups and several million people. This confederation had trade connections stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the Virginia coast and from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes. Each group was more or less independent although tied to the four regional mound centers. These regional mound centers included Cahokia in Missouri, Moundville in Alabama, Etowah in Georgia, and Spiro in Oklahoma.

The Spiro Mounds Complex, one of Oklahoma's most important prehistoric American Indian sites, is located in LeFlore County on the southern bank of the Arkansas River, just east of Spiro, Oklahoma. The site grew from a small farming village to one of the most important centers of the Mississippian Period. Twelve mounds, ceremonial areas, and a support city were created between 850 and 1450 AD. The mounds of the complex were constructed in layers, using basket loads of dirt. Three types of mounds were built: one burial mound, two temple mounds, and nine house mounds.

The Spiro Mounds site is world renowned because of the incredible amount of art and artifacts dug from the Craig Mound, the site's only burial mound. The mound stood 33 feet high and 112 feet in diameter.

From the 1870's, Choctaw and Chickasaw freedmen farmed the land within the complex, but the mounds remained undisturbed until 1917. At that time, Joseph Thoburn, who had taken photographs of the site in 1914, tested Ward Mound One, a house mound. The landowners discouraged further work until 1933 when commercial diggers calling themselves the Pocola Mining Company acquired a lease for the Craig Mound.

From 1933 until 1935 the Pocola Mining Company dug haphazardly into the burial mound. During just two years, they destroyed about one-third of the mound and sold thousands of artifacts, made of stone, copper, shell, basketry, and fabric, to collectors throughout the world.

Dubbed the "King Tut of the Arkansas Valley" by the Kansas City Star in 1935, the site yielded artifacts in greater numbers, a better state of preservation, and showing more elaborate and sophisticated decoration than any Mississippian site yet discovered.

Continuing destruction convinced the Oklahoma Legislature to pass a licensing requirement for the protection of the site, and in November 1935 the Pocola Mining Company was finally shut down.

In 1936 the University of Oklahoma began scientific excavation of what remained of the burial mound. From June 1936 until October 1941 archaeologists oversaw Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers in systematically investigating the Spiro Mounds site.

More than six hundred complete or partial burials, along with thousands of artifacts, were recovered from the Craig Mound. The OU and WPA crews also worked on the other eight mounds known at the time. All of these mounds were researched, although they still have some portions intact. In 1941 the University of Oklahoma ended excavations because of World War II and the demise of the WPA.

Above:   These arrow points, beads and the carved shell face were all dug from Craig Mound. An estimated 1200 pounds of shell beads, pearl beads, and stone beads were brought out of the mound.	Above:   The most important and extraordinary finds from the Craig Mound are the shell engravings. The multitude of images on the more than 1400 carved shells portray the best written visual history left behind on a single site by any Late Stone Age culture in North America.
Organic materials, like shell, don't last as long as artifacts made of stone. Most of the artifacts made by prehistoric people were made of organic materials like wood, antler, bone, feathers, ivory, etc. Only a tiny percentage of those have been preserved. The farther back in time they were made, the less likely they survived. The knowledge that these types of materials were preserved in the Craig Mound and were not properly excavated to save them has been the greatest frustration about how the discovery of the Spiro Complex was handled.

The land continued to be privately owned and farmed until the mid-1960's when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers purchased most of the mound center to create a national archaeological park, which did not materialize. On May 9, 1978, the Spiro Mounds Archaeological State Park, with the help of the Oklahoma Archeological Survey, opened an Interpretive Center as the first, and still only, Oklahoma prehistoric American Indian archaeological site open to the public. The facility is under the direction of the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department.

In 1979 the Oklahoma Archeological Survey conducted additional research at Spiro Mounds Archaeological State Park, and three additional mounds were located. One of these, a house mound, was tested in 1979 and 1980. The other two mounds will remain undisturbed.

The Spiro Mounds Group was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969 (NR 69000153). In 1991 site administration transferred to the Oklahoma Historical Society. An expanded Interpretive Center at Spiro Mounds Archaeological Center and an interpretive trail system allow visitors to learn about this unique and powerful part of Oklahoma's past.