The Great Serpent Mound ownership and authorship controversy

Record summary

Great Serpent Mound became a focus of early twentieth-century arguments about whether its builders were Adena, Hopewell, or another supposedly vanished population. Preservation campaigns, including the work of the Ohio Historical Society, helped protect the earthwork, while competing chronologies and racialized “lost race” explanations circulated in public writing. Modern archaeology places the monument within Indigenous North American traditions, though precise dating and construction episodes remain subjects of research. The lead supports comparison of mound preservation, museum authority, and changing interpretations of monumental landscapes.