Description
Looting Spiro Mounds: An American King Tut's Tomb by historian David La Vere tells the tragic story of grave robbing in America that rivals the robbing of king Tut's tomb. This historical narrative explains how a coal mining company in Spiro, Oklahoma legally ravaged a so-called Mound Builder site and literally destroyed a unique Native American community that had thrived from 800 to 1450. The tale also involves the work of an academic Forrest Clements, chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of Oklahoma who had a different agenda than the coal miners. He nevertheless wanted to excavate the burial site for his own scholarly reasons. The intrigue that surrounded this site and the time period of economic devastation guaranteed that this sacred site would undergo desecration. The author offers the student of historical archaeology as well as the general reader with a good read that tucks its footnotes at the back of the book along with the bibliography and index. In the epilogue the author speculates which present-day Native American community claims the people of Spiro to be their ancestors.