Serpent Mounds

Serpent Mounds is an archaeological and funerary site at Keene in Ontario, Canada, overlooking Lake Rice in Peterborough County. It lies within Serpent Mounds Provincial Park, a provincial park that is currently non-operational and was ceded to the Hiawatha, a Mississauga tribe, who continued to use the site. It was recognized as a national historic site of Canada in 1982.

The site consists of nine distinct funerary tumuli. The largest is sinuous in shape, about 60 m long, 8 m wide and 1.8 m at its highest point. It is surrounded by eight smaller oval or round tumuli, often called “the serpent’s eggs.” Although the record classifies the site as a megalithic mound with integral stones, the wider tradition describes earthworks of piled soil rather than megaliths.

The site was first explored in the late nineteenth century by the archaeologist David Boyle. It is dated between 50 BC and 300 AD and is linked with the Point Peninsula culture, a cultural period that spread across present-day Ontario and the State of New York from 600 BC to 700 AD during the sylvicole period.

Serpent Mounds is unique in Canada. The name comes from the winding shape of the largest tumulus and the accompanying oval mounds known as the serpent’s eggs. The site appears in a list of heritage places in Peterborough County, alongside the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio, USA.

Serpent Mounds is a megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones) in Peterborough County, Canada. Wikidata describes it as: burial mounds in Peterborough County, Ontario, Canada. No English Wikipedia article exists for it; the full text below is the French article "Tumulus Serpent", shown in the original language.