Sinnissippi Mounds, Archaeological burial mounds in Sterling, Illinois.
Sinnissippi Mounds is an archaeological site made up of several earthen burial mounds on a high bluff above the Rock River in Sterling, Illinois. The mounds are set within a public park and can be reached by a network of paths that wind through the grounds.
The mounds were built roughly two thousand years ago by people of the Havana Hopewell culture, who used the site for burial purposes. That culture was known across a wide area of the Midwest for constructing earthen monuments.
The mounds sit on a bluff above the Rock River, and that elevated position was clearly a deliberate choice by the people who built them. Visitors today can stand at the same spot and look out over the same valley that made this place meaningful for burial ceremonies.
The site is part of a public park and can be reached on foot via marked paths with informational signs along the way. A visit from spring through fall works best, as paths can become muddy or slippery in wet weather.
In the 1870s the Sterling Scientific Club recorded the site in detail and gathered many artifacts before later digging damaged the area. Those early records are now among the few reliable sources for understanding what the mounds originally looked like.
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