When most of us think of the southeastern Indian tribes, our immediate thoughts are of the Creek and Cherokee, who interacted with settlers and traders during the transitional period from Native dominance to white dominance of the region. However, the precursor to this period included an earlier people who settled the river valleys and forests of Alabama, long before DeSoto made his fateful encounter at Maubila.

The Woodland Period is usually characterized by the social and ceremonial development of the people within this timeline and is generally considered to have begun around 1000 BCE and lasted until circa 1000 CE. No definite dates are recognized by archaeologists and historians because different people developed their societies at different rates of expansion based on a number of man-made and natural circumstances.

Furthermore, the Woodland Period is divided into three distinct periods; the Early Period, Middle Period and Late Woodland Period. Each one witnessed the mound building of indigenous people expand to include more elaborate structures.

Mound building among North American Indians seems to have become an integral part of the societies in the Midwest and the Southeast by 1000 BCE. Archaeologists have examined mounds built by Indians as early as the Archaic Period in certain areas, thus underscoring the idea that cultures developed at dissimilar rates in different geographical regions.

In the Southeast, mound building is believed to have begun in Louisiana and spread out into the rest of the region. The mounds in the Southeast, including those in Alabama, were usually dome-shaped structures that varied in size, at least in the Early Woodland Period, from two to five feet high and between 30 and 60 feet across. In most cases, the mounds were formed over the top of burials designated for the more important members of the group.

The Middle Woodland Period was host to the creation of what has been called the Hopewell Ceremonial Complex. This term refers to a specific variety of structure arrangement and artifact style that initially developed in the Ohio Valley and then spread into the Southeast. The mound structures created during this period were more intricate with burials accompanied by numerous offerings.

In Alabama, this type of religious structure configuration is known as the Copera Mortuary Complex. There is a wonderfully preserved example of this religious structure visible at the Oakville Indian Mounds located in Danville in Lawrence County. At similar sites, burial items encased within the mound are made most extensively of copper and lead.

The mound building culture transformed as the Late Woodland Period dominated, beginning around 500 CE and lasting until around 1000 CE. To place this in perspective, the mound builders that created the Bottle Creek site in northern Baldwin County existed between 1200 CE to 1450 CE.

In the Late Woodland Era it appears that the attention to mound building for funeral practices waned for many reasons. Maybe the funeral practices changed as the belief systems changed? Nevertheless, the emphasis on the mound complexes seems to have changed leading up to the period in which the Bottle Creek Mounds were constructed. Either way this early human inhabitation of Alabama in general and the Gulf Coast in particular is a fascinating and often overlooked chapter in our local history.