Spiro Mounds Archaeological Center

Between about 850 and 1450 the people at Spiro raised twelve mounds on a bend of the Arkansas River: nine house mounds, two temple mounds and one burial mound, Craig Mound, with an elite village and part of a support city around them. With Cahokia, Moundville and Etowah it was one of four regional centers of the Mississippian world, tied by trade from the Rockies to the Virginia coast. Its builders are believed to have been Caddoan speakers, and the site's culturally affiliated nations are the Caddo Nation and the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes.

Choctaw farmers and Freedmen worked the land from the late 1800s and left the mounds largely alone. In 1933 commercial diggers calling themselves the Pocola Mining Company leased Craig Mound and for two years dug into it, destroying about a third of it and selling thousands of objects of stone, copper, shell, basketry and cloth to collectors around the world. A state licensing law shut them down in November 1935. The University of Oklahoma then excavated what was left until 1941, removing more than six hundred burials. The looting made Oklahoma one of the first states to protect archaeological sites by law.

Craig Mound was rebuilt in the 1970s from photographs taken before the digging. The center opened on May 9, 1978. About a mile and a half of interpreted trail leaves from the visitor center and is open only when the center is. Many objects on display are being repatriated under NAGPRA, so some may be covered or removed.