80 ANCIENT EARTHWORKS IN INDIANA. 



ANCIENT EARTHWORKS IN INDIANA. 



Prof. E, T. Brown furnishes the Indianapolis Journal with the following 

 account of the visit of the Archffiological Society to the wonderful earth- 

 works at Anderson, with a description of the formations: 



"The Archaeological Association of Indiana are indebted to the C, C, 

 C. and I. Eailroad for an excursion car placed at their disposal to visit the 

 ancient earthworks of Madison County, Indiana. About thirty persons 

 availed themselves of the invitation, and spent a day very pleasantly in 

 examining the most curious and wonderful works of antiquity in the State. 

 The earthworks are situated on a high bluff overlooking White Eiver and 

 the country beyond it, and but a few rods north of the Bee JLine Eailroad 

 at a point three miles east of the City of Anderson. The ground is at pres- 

 ent covered with a heavy forest of large trees, and is inclosed by a common 

 rail fence. The principal work is a circular embankment elevated about 

 eio-ht feet above the earth on the outside, and measuring 320 feet in diame- 

 ter. The earth-wall is sixty-three feet wide at the base, and has a level 

 surface at its summit of about nine feet wide. The ascent from the outside 

 is quite gradual, but when the summit is gained the descent is very steep 

 to the bottom of a ditch eighteen feet below the top of the wall. This 

 ditch is sixty feet wide at the top and encloses a circular plain 138 feet in 

 diameter, in the centre of which is a mound four feet high and fifty feet in 

 diameter. Looking to the south, a few degrees west, is a gateway, or open- 

 in o- in the embankment thirty feet wide, and a pass- way of the same width, 

 and on a level with the original surface of the earth breaks the ditch and 

 makes a level roadway to the inclosed plain and mound. On each side of 

 this gateway the wall rises some two feet above its general level, while at 

 the point directly o^Dposite, for the space of about one hundred feet, the 

 wall is gradually reduced in height about the same amount. The central 

 mound has been opened in two places, but nothing of importance was dis- 

 covered. A number of large trees are growing on the wall and in the en- 

 closed space. A walnut tree had recently been cut down with a saw, leaving 

 its stump on top of the embankment. This stump showed 217 annual 

 rings, or growths. An oak tree one-third larger than this stands on the 

 embankment, and the remains of a large walnut tree which had fallen, per- 

 haps fifty years since, was observed at another point on the wall. The 

 earth appears to be a sandy clay, with occasionally a pebble or small boul- 

 der enclosed. The circle is a perfect one, and the slope of the bank, both 

 inside and out, is very regular and uniform. No modern engineer, with the 

 .advantage of our improved implements, could have made a more perfect 



job. 



"Around this great work, at different distances from it, are small in- 



closures, some of them circular, others irregular in form, but all constructed 



on the general principle of inclosing a central space by means of an em- 



