BY ROBERT MCFARLAND, JR. DBJ Contributing Writer

On the afternoon of April 7, over 100 attended an official ceremony recognizing the Winterville Indian Mounds (and museum) just north of Greenville as a national historic landmark. Elbert Hilliard, Director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, presided over the event.
“I am very gratified how the people of Greenville, Mayor Paul Artman’s office, The Greenville Garden Club, the Winterville Mound’s Committee and so many others have contributed to giving Winterville Mounds a new look and a new beginning,” says Eleanor Humphreys, branch director.
Humphreys also added her appreciation to The Star Training Group, (an organization funded by MACE that teaches young people how to handle tools and work in the construction industry), who helped with the cleaning and job work on the grounds.
Taken over by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History last year, Winterville is undergoing a rebirth as a major effort is underway to take the mounds to a higher level in terms of renovations and publicity in order to attract more visitors to the mounds.
A prehistoric Native American ceremonial center, the mounds thrived from approximately 1000 to 1450 A.D. The Winterville civilization maintained close contacts with neighboring Native American groups to the north and south along the Mississippi River. Around 1450, the site was abandoned. In the 1940s the National Park Service and Harvard University undertook the first modern archaeological survey of the Lower Mississippi mounds that included the mounds at Winterville. Lower Mississippi Survey archaeologists, Dr. Steven Williams and Dr. Jeffrey P. Brain, led excavations at Winterville in the 1960s and in 1989 the Mississippi Department of Archives and History published Dr. Brain’s final report on Winterville: “Late Prehistoric Culture Contact in the Lower Mississippi Valley.”
In 1939, largely through the efforts of the Greenville Garden Club, local organization of individuals formed the Winterville Mounds Association. Approximately 42 acres of the Winterville mound site was purchased and conveyed to the City of Greenville. The Winterville Mounds Association raised funds throughout the community to build the museum.
“To me, the event was a coming together of the community in an effort to begin to establish Winterville Mounds to its proper place as a premiere archeological site,” says Humphreys.
Winterville Mounds State Park, located six miles north of Greenville on Highway 1 is open seven days a week. For information, please call 662-334-4684. DBJ