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Headlines

Amateur archaeologist hopes to explain mysterious Indian mounds
 
Published Tuesday, January 15, 2008
by Rachel Gosciej>

For Jamie Wesseler, the sacred Indian mounds located in Indiana, from Anderson to Bath , are full of mystery and intrigue.

 

Wesseler, the author of “Where the Birds Go When it Rains” and an amateur archaeologist, is pursuing two dreams: to excavate and reconstruct an Indian village just outside of Cambridge City, IN and to prove his theory that the ancient Indians built the mounds in response to witnessing something fantastic in the sky.

 

Wesseler hopes to excavate the land and rebuild it to appear as it did centuries ago. He wants people to be able to immerse themselves in the ancient culture and learn how the Indians once lived.

 

“We’re going to fully excavate this property, where we find that they had, maybe, some of their homes,” Wesseler said. “We’re going to reconstruct those homes so folks can come out and participate on the dig, as well as maybe live in the village, you know, for a night or whatever they wish to do, come out for the day, to see what it was like to have been here at the village site.”

 

Wesseler hopes to also reproduce the sacred circle near the village in Cambridge City that was plowed down. He is also currently in the process of trying to locate skulls that are missing from the burial sites. Originally, there were twenty skeletons on the site; however, early in the 1900s, a portion of the site was used to quarry gravel for roads, and the skulls that were found during this process were removed. With help of Eugene Fannin who has assisted Wesseler in his work, eleven unidentified skulls have been located in museums. They hope to do soil samples on the skulls in order to determine if those are the actual skulls from the site. Wesseler and Fannin also hope to locate the remaining skulls.

 

Fannin and Wesseler have extensively photographed the land from both the ground and the air. Fannin has used a GPS system in order to know the exact location of the mounds, in the unfortunate event of them being destroyed at some point.

 

As for Wesseler’s second dream, he believes that the village inhabitants may have seen the star of Bethlehem . Evidences that lead him to this theory are the sacred Indian mounds built throughout Indiana, the largest of which located in Anderson at Mounds State Park . Most notable about the mounds are their shape and design.

 

At an interview at Mounds State Park , Wesseler explains the shape of the mounds located there.

 

“What I believe…is that they [the Indians] saw something in the sky...We’ve got this big mound in the middle that looks kind of like a full moon. It is surrounded by a ditch that was dug out and the dirt then was thrown up around the surrounding ground to form a C-shaped mound that could be representative of a halo, of something that was shining brightly in the sky.” Pointing to a pathway going to the center of the mound, he said, “And to our west here, or behind us, would be the causeway, kind of like a beam of light that made a shaft down to earth.”

 

Other evidence includes the data uncovered directly through excavations of the Indian mounds, as well as radiocarbon dates. At the location north of Cambridge City , the circles’ dates range from 50 B.C. to 115 A.D., just around the birth of Christ. A media release about Wesseler’s book states, “While scientists are unsure as to the exact date and year Jesus was born, the most probable dates fall between 12 B.C. and 2 B.C.”

 

Wesseler is currently pursuing his theory and is in the process of raising money to fund the excavation. He hopes sales from his book, as well as a possible screenplay or grant, will provide the needed funds.

 


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