Anna Indigenous Mounds Site, Natchez, MS

08/12/2026

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📌 Anna Mound Complex — Natchez, Mississippi
📍 31°41'43.71"N 91°20'54.45"W

Hidden beneath the woods about ten miles north of Natchez is an eight-mound ceremonial center that helped define an entire chapter of the prehistoric Mississippi Valley...and today, a road runs through it.

The Anna Site is the type site for the Anna phase, roughly 1200–1350 CE, of the Natchez Bluffs Plaquemine culture. Although occupation in the area began earlier, major mound construction was underway by around 1200 and continued as Anna developed into an important regional center overlooking the Mississippi River.

The complex originally contained eight platform mounds, with six arranged around a central plaza. The dominant feature was Mound 3, rising about 50 feet directly along the edge of the bluff. A ramp descended from the mound toward the plaza, facing Mound 5 about 300 feet away. Other mounds bordered the plaza, while two stood farther east and northeast, creating a ceremonial landscape spread across the high ground between steep ravines.

This wasn't simply a collection of dirt piles. Excavations found evidence for structures on the mound summits, including a building on Mound 4. Archaeologists believe the growth of the complex may reflect the emergence of increasingly powerful hereditary elites within Plaquemine society, the same broader cultural tradition that eventually gave rise to the historic Natchez encountered by Europeans centuries later.

Anna is especially important because it sits near the beginning of a remarkable sequence of mound centers in the Natchez Bluffs. Construction continued through the Foster phase (1350–1500), while later regional ceremonial importance shifted toward places such as Emerald Mound. Unlike the Grand Village of the Natchez, however, Anna appears to have been abandoned around 1500 and there is no evidence that it was later reoccupied.

Archaeologists began investigating the site in 1924, with additional work continuing throughout the 20th century. Excavations by John Cotter in 1951 became particularly important for establishing the archaeological chronology of the Natchez Bluffs, and additional excavations in 1997 helped confirm that sequence. The site's significance eventually led to its designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1993.

Today, most of Anna is heavily wooded and difficult to recognize from ordinary aerial imagery. That's where LiDAR completely changes the view. Strip away the trees and the massive mound forms suddenly emerge from the bluff, surrounded by some of the steepest ravines imaginable. The terrain also makes the location of the largest mound especially dramatic, perched immediately beside a deep drop toward the Mississippi floodplain.

More than 700 years after Anna flourished, the forest has reclaimed the site, but the landscape underneath it still preserves the footprint of one of the major ceremonial centers that preceded Emerald Mound and the historic Natchez world.

07/07/2026

J.D. Jennings visited the Anna site in 1940 on behalf of the National Park Service while conducting field surveys for the soon to be Natchez Trace Parkway. He noted that a silo trench had been dug into Mound 5 and that five whole vessels had been recovered by the landowner. He also said that Mound 3 had been significantly eroded by grazing and cultivation (Jennings 1940). He also drew a map of the site (Jennings and Wagner 1940).

Anna (22 Ad 500) has eight (possibly nine) mounds, six of which are arranged around a plaza on the edge of the bluff overlooking Anna’s Bottom. The largest mound (Mound 3) is 16.4m high and has a ramp facing east-southeast (oriented toward Mound 5). The site is primarily Plaquemine, with significant occupations during the Anna and Foster phases Gordon phase ceramics are also well represented. There are minor components of the Panther Lake, Issaquena, and Balmoral phases. A single glass bead suggests an additional late (Natchez phase) component.

https://rla.unc.edu/mmt/reports/MMT%20Southern%20Phase%20I.pdf

05/31/2026

Tallest Anna mound, C (3), height 50 ft. Photo taken March 16, 1917, from mound B looking westward toward the Mississippi River. The home and fence are gone as is a barn that was on the other side of the dirt road. The site sits on the top and edges of a 100ft high and steep bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. From: Brown, 1926.

Photo courtesy of Dr Greg Little, author of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Native American Indian Mounds & Earthworks (2016)

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/