Anna Indigenous Mounds Site, Natchez, MS

01/31/2026

So much lost to “progress”… Anna deserves to be restored and made into a National Park along with an Indigenous Peoples of Mississippi Museum.

01/30/2026

The Anna Site has been called by several different names during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. During the nineteenth century, it was named the Voucherie Site, and later the Lewis Site after the families that owned the site. About 1900, Anna and Henry Robson acquired the site. It has also been called the Robson Site. The site is sometimes called the Stowers Site after the present owners of the land. In recent years, Anna has become the name most commonly applied to the site in the archeological literature.

The Anna Site has also had different site numbers assigned to it in the archeological literature.

It was originally listed by John Cotter as MAd-2 (1951:25), when he studied the site as a National Park Service archeologist.

The Lower Mississippi River Valley
Survey: directed by Harvard University,
published the designation for the Anna Site as 26-K-1.

The site number for the Anna Site, as designated by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, is 22-Ad-500.

The Anna Indigenous Mounds Site deserves to be restored and made into a National Park along with an Indigenous Peoples of Mississippi Museum.

01/30/2026

The first archeological investigation of the Anna Site occurred in 1843 when a Dr. M. W. Dickeson, an amateur archeologist, visited the site. At that time, the site was called the Lewis Mounds, after the antebellum landowner. Dickeson dug into the side of a ravine at the site and found numerous human burials that contained grave goods, such as ceramic pottery, projectile points, and shell ornaments.

The human burials were decomposed and fragile, but Dickeson noted that the skulls exhibited evidence of intentional flattening, deformation, or head flattening. He also noted that some of the skeletons had been burned. Dickeson did not describe the mounds or other features of the site.

Native American groups in the Southeast and Northwest, historically practiced infant head flattening, using boards and sandbags to reshape a baby's skull for a distinctive forehead, a custom linked to tribal identity or status. This practice, part of artificial cranial deformation, began at birth and continued for months, creating a flattened forehead, though it eventually faded by the late 19th century.

How it Worked:
• Materials: Infants were placed on special cradleboards, with boards and bags of sand applied to the forehead.
• Process: Gentle, consistent pressure reshaped the soft skull bones over several months.
• Purpose: It was a cultural practice, not harmful, and indicated status or lineage.

01/30/2026

Restore the Anna Indigenous Mounds Site, Natchez, MS and make it a National Park along with an Indigenous Peoples of Mississippi Museum.

Natchez officials are preparing for a major transformation aimed at elevating the city as a national cultural heritage destination. With a $24.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation, the city will upgrade infrastructure along the “Forks to Freedom Corridor,” a major route connecting key historic sites to downtown and the Mississippi River bluff.

Get the full story > mpbonline.org/blogs/news/natchez-lands-245-million-grant-to-boost-tourism-and-honor-its-complex-history/

01/22/2026

Something that I do not feel enough people realize is that our mounds are millennia older than the so highly revered Egyptian pyramids. Our mounds hold a plethora of information about indigenous peoples that once thrived across the continent long before Europeans thought to discover it. There is still much to learn from Anna and why it should be restored and protected.

01/20/2026

The Anna Site is a major prehistoric ceremonial mound complex and the type site of the Anna phase (A.D. 1200-1350) of the Plaquemine culture. The site is approx ten miles north of Natchez, Mississippi.

The Anna site consists of eight truncated pyramidal platform mounds across nearly 50 acres. The largest of the mounds (Mound 3) is 16.4 m in height and is sited on the western end of the complex, with the second largest mound (Mound 6) being 11.2 m in height on the eastern end of the complex. Four smaller mounds are grouped around the two largest mounds forming a plaza area.

The plaza is bounded by three smaller mounds on the south (Mounds 1, 2, and 5), and Mound 4 on the north. Two additional smaller mounds (Mounds 7 and 8 ) are located east of the plaza area. These smaller mounds range from 4.8 m to 2.2 m in height.

Environmental Setting:

The Anna Site is located atop The Loess Hills, a relatively narrow (8-48 km-wide) strip of uplands that stretch from the northwestern to the southwestern borders of the state.

The Loess Hills area lies to the east of
the Mississippi River alluvial valley and rises abruptly at the eastern edge of the floodplain. The Loess Hills are composed of loess, a tan-colored calcareous silt that forms a continuous deposit draped over the underlying topography. The accumulation of loess in this mantle is the thickest at the edge of the floodplain, as much as 30m in some places, and gradually thins out toward the east.

It is generally agreed that the Loess Hills were formed during the Late Pleistocene (20,000 to 18,000 years ago), but the nature of their origin has been the subject of debate. Some geologists believe the Loess Hills were formed by colluvial transport, while others believe them to be of eolian origin.

Loess soils have a great deal of strength due to their calcareous nature. The lime within the soil cements individual particles together and gives the loess soils the ability to form steep angles of repose. Leaching, however, serves to weaken this cohesiveness through the removal of the lime, leading to erosion and gullying.

This erosive process is evident at the Anna Mounds Site where deep ravines have formed near some of the mounds. This natural process has caused the topography in areas of thick accumulation to become extremely rugged, commonly having 20 to 30m of local relief.

Soils derived from loess parent materials of the Loess Hills have a high fertility and are easy to work. If the problem of erosion is kept under control, such soils are capable of producing high crop yields.