JAY JOHNSON
A Mississippian Ceremonial Center
Crew members complete work on a trench dug to explore a cluster of house remains located in a cultivated portion of the site. The main mound is covered by the trees in the background.
An investigation of Parchman Place Mounds reveals the expected and the unexpected. By Michael Finger
F
armers in northern Mississippi tend to keep their eyes on the ground. After all, close attention to the cotton, soybeans, corn, and milo that stretch to the horizon can mean the difference between a good crop and a disaster. Besides, the only things that rise more than a few feet into the air in the Mississippi Delta, which is as flat as a frying pan (and just as hot in the summertime), are the occasional flocks of birds, the regular drone of cropdusters spraying herbicides, and the clouds of mosquitoes that swarm out of the muddy creeks snaking through the fields. So folks in Coahoma County probably stared in disbelief one summer evening last July when what appeared
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to be a yellow go-kart dangling from a kite slowly soared across their fields. As it flew closer, they could see that this odd-looking device was a parasail, a propeller-driven ultralight aircraft suspended beneath a rainbow-tinted parachute. Tommy Ike Hailey, an archaeologist at Louisiana’s Northwestern State University, was flying the contraption. Strapped into the seat behind him, taking thermal and near-infrared images of the ground below, was Bryan Haley, an archaeologist with the Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Mississippi (better known in these parts as Ole Miss). They were part of the first professional investigation of the Parchman Place Mounds, a 59-acre Mississippian site purchased this winter by The Archaeological Conservancy. spring • 2003
