VIDEO: Ingomar Mound Day in Union County

UNION COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI)- Every year, volunteers and workers from multiple organizations hold the annual Ingomar Mound Day.

This event provides a fun way for families in the surrounding area to experience the outdoors and learn about the people that came before them.

It wasn’t until 18-80 that the Smithsonian identified this thirty foot structure as a mound, but the archaeologists behind that excavation dated it to be much, much older.

Dating actually puts the mound to be twenty-two hundred years old.

But how did the Smithsonian make their way to North Mississippi?

“A church member, who lived just around the corner in the 18-50s, and began to write letters to the Smithsonian about this site. They came in the 1880s and did their excavation,” said the Director of the Union County Heritage Museum, Jill Smith

For over a decade, families come out each year to learn about the mound and the period it was built in, The Middle Woodland Era.

“We also have the opportunity for locals around here to bring… If they have any artifacts, they can come here to get more information about what it is that they have and also get a date and era estimate on when the object was,” said President of the North Mississippi Atlatl Association Josh Wagner.

Some of the artifacts brought by local residents registered to go as far back as six thousand b.c.

There was also a competition for throwing an atlatl, the weapon used by the Natives around that time period. The atlatl is a light spear that is thrown by using a sling.

This is one of the many ways that archaeologist and citizens try to understand the way of life for these native tribes.

“You can think of this as being something sort of like our modern-day country churches, where the church is the place that people gather… But no one lives at the church. They live in the surrounding country side, and they only… The church is the central place for them. It’s an important place for them to gather, socialize, get to know each other,” said archaeologist Janet Rafferty.

Over two thousand years are between us, and its becoming clear that we’re not so different as we may think.