Postcard From Toltec Mounds

Toltec Mounds Archaeological State Park in Scott, Arkansas is a National Historic Landmark. The site preserves and interprets the state's tallest Native American mounds. 

Toltec Mounds is one of the largest archaeological sites in the Lower Mississippi Valley. At one time, the mounds had an 8 to 10 foot-high earthen embankment on three sides and was protected on the fourth by a small lake. A century ago, 16 mounds were known inside the embankment with two of them being 38 and 50 feet high. Today, several mounds and a remnant of the embankment are still visible and the locations of other smaller mounds are known.

Two of the larger mounds

Toltec was built by Plum Bayou culture people between A.D. 700 and 1050. The mounds were religious and social centers for the people living in the surrounding countryside. The Toltec center itself had a very small resident population  which consisted mostly of the political and religious leaders and their families. The mound locations were planned using principles based on alignment with certain important solar positions and standardized units of measurement. This alignment can still be witnessed at the site during the spring and fall equinoxes.

The lake on one side of the mounds with a
mound in the background.

"Cypress Knees" - roots of the cypress trees
growing around the lake next to the mounds.

Early sunset at Toltec Mounds.