[2] Historians and archaeologists have theorized that the site is the location of the main village of the Ichisi encountered by the Hernando de Soto expedition in 1539.

Mound B, completely round in shape, has a feature almost unique in southeastern archaeology: a spiral ramp leading to its summit.

This and other evidence has led archaeologists to speculate that the mound was in the process of being enlarged and given a new layer of fill when work was abruptly stopped.

These excavations started with one directed by James A. Ford in 1934, Arthur R. Kelly in 1936, Gordon Willey in 1938, and in 1939-1940 by Jesse Jennings and Charles Fairbanks.

[2] On March 29, 1539, the Hernando de Soto entrada, while winding northward after leaving Florida, recorded coming upon the province of Ichisi, which may have been part of the larger paramount chiefdom of Ocute.

They were greeted at the first village by women dressed in white mantles, offering gifts of corn cakes and wild onions.

On March 30 they were ferried across the Ocmulgee River in dugout canoes and met the paramount chief of the province, who they noted had only one good eye.

[2][6] But archaeological work in 2009 at a site in rural Telfair County, Georgia, near the present-day town of McRae, discovered evidence that calls this identification into question.

Evidence from the Telfair site suggests that de Soto's crossing of the Ocmulgee River took place here, approximately 90 miles (140 km) further south than at Lamar Mounds.