Platform mound

This site was covered with a layer of basket-transported soil and clay known as mound fill, and a new structure constructed on its summit.

Intrusive burials occurred when a grave was dug into a mound and the body or a bundle of defleshed, disarticulated bones was deposited into it.

Mound C at Etowah has been found to have more than 100 intrusive burials into the final layer of the mound, with many grave goods added, such as Mississippian copper plates (Etowah plates), monolithic stone axes, ceremonial pottery and carved whelk shell gorgets.

He based his theory on analogy to ethnographic and historic data on related Native American tribal groups in the Southeastern United States.

Knight suggests a microcosmic ritual organization based around a "native earth" autochthony, agriculture, fertility, and purification scheme, in which mounds and the site layout replicate cosmology.