This gas pipeline in southeastern Louisiana’s marsh was laid directly through an archaeological site.
Farmers often regard Indian mounds as troublesome when they occur in areas otherwise ideal for plowing. If farmers do not recognize the value of these mounds, they may have them removed. For example, a man in Madison Parish sold the dirt from a large Indian mound on his land for road fill. The ancient monument was removed so the land could be planted with soybeans.
Dirt from this mound in Madison Parish was used for a road foundation ...
Population growth in Louisiana has led to rapidly expanding cities and extended transportation networks. Modern cities are often in the same places that Indians and early Europeans built their settlements, so city growth is almost certain to disturb archaeological sites. As early as the turn of the century, archaeologists were charting the destruction of a mound group in eastern Louisiana. A city was growing up around one of the largest groups of mounds in the Southeastern United States. In 1931, an archaeologist wrote about the leveling of one of the mounds, a square multi-stage one, 80 feet tall and 180 feet on each side. The dirt was used to build the approach ramps for a bridge. Today, part of only one mound remains, protected because of the recent cemetery on top.
leaving behind only a few clumps of trees.
The destruction mentioned above has resulted from a lack of understanding of the importance of these sites. It has taken Louisianians a long time to realize the uniqueness and richness of their state’s cultural heritage. While many people are now joining in the efforts to conserve the remaining sites, a few continue to willfully destroy them.
Some individuals dig into sites in order to find artifacts that can be sold to antiquity dealers. These looters have demolished entire Indian villages, stealing the story of those sites from all Louisianians. Even if the artifacts are eventually turned over to an archaeologist, most of the information has been obliterated. Lost are the records of where the artifacts originally came from, the relationships of the artifacts to each other, the samples of materials for laboratory analysis, and usually the ordinary or broken artifacts that tell the archaeologist much, but sell for little.