The first published surveys of the mound were by Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin Hamilton Davis, featured in their historic volume, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (1848), that was commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution.

The generally accepted interpretation of the structure is that of an open-mouth head of a serpent nearly engulfs a hollow oval feature that faces the east and is 120-feet (37 m)-long.

Throughout the twentieth century, anthropologists and archaeologists had disputed which culture and people had created the Serpent Mound, as may be seen in a overview published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2002.

[3] The Ancient Earthworks Project published "New Radiocarbon Dates Suggest Serpent Mound is More Than 2,000 Years Old" (July 2014).

In 2019, Monaghan and Hermann published additional research in an article in The Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology that supports their earlier conclusions.

[8] It is a Middle Woodland Hopewell burial mound in a zigzag shape that may or may not have been intended to depict a serpent (Oberholtzer 2013:163).

Several groups of Paleo-Indians (13000 BCE–7000 BCE) occupied the subject land in Ohio prior to the development of the Adena and Hopewell cultures.

[11] The Adena culture consisted of the pre-contact Native Americans who lived throughout the midwest in the areas that would become the states of Kentucky, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and most predominantly, Ohio.

[13] They often lived in small villages with surrounding gardens, but moved frequently to follow various animal herds while planting and feeding on various types of nuts, fruits, and roots along the way.

Observed through remains found at the type site, archaeologists characterize the Adena's clay pottery through its large, thick-walled vessels, resembling a modern-day bowl.

Mounds such as this hosted multiple burials, characterized by the rituals performed and the funerary objects worn such as bracelets, ear spools, gorgets, and other ornaments.

Numerous Adena groups began to build larger earthworks and effigy mounds and expanded their efforts to acquire exotic raw materials such as copper and mica through trade.

In some regions, including Southwestern Ohio, the Adena way of life persisted well into the first century CE through the efforts of these people.

These civilizations flourished in the modern-day regions of southern Ohio, northern Kentucky, southeastern Indiana, and western West Virginia.

Despite what many believe, the tribes of the Fort Ancient Culture were not responsible for the creation of The Great Serpent Mound, although they contributed to its physical appearance through maintenance of it around 200 CE.

In 1996, the team of Robert V. Fletcher and Terry L. Cameron (under the supervision of the Ohio Historical Society's Bradley T. Lepper) reopened a trench created by Frederic Ward Putnam of Harvard more than 100 years before.

Natural changes called bioturbation, including burrows, frost cracks, etc., can reverse the structural timeline of an earthen mound such as Serpent Mound, however, and bioturbation can shift carbon left by a later culture on the surface to areas deep within the structure, making the earthwork appear younger.

When attempting to understand the impact origin of this structure, the pattern of disruption of sedimentary strata has provided archaeologists with a lot of information.

[citation needed] In 1987, Clark and Marjorie Hardman published their finding that the oval-to-head area of the serpent is aligned to the summer solstice sunset.

A depiction of the serpent mound appeared in The Century periodical in April 1890, drawn by William Jacob Baer.

[16] According to Woodward and McDonald's interpretation: “Serpent Mound has given rise to a rich, diverse, and dynamic body of folk and scientific lore — there is no shortage of thoughts about how the effigy came to exist or, perhaps more importantly, why.

At one time this earthen serpent was considered by some people with Christian affinity to be a mark of God that indicated the location of the Garden of Eden and served as a reminder of his moral authority.

Today, New Age pilgrims find power and enlightenment, traditional views revere unrevealed distant purpose and perspective, and others seek meaning in geometric relationships between mounds and astronomical concurrences.”Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley fascinated many across the country, including Frederic Ward Putnam of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University.

When he visited the Midwest in 1885, he found that plowing and development were destroying many of the mounds, removing significant history of these cultures and their burial sites.

In 1886, with help from a group of wealthy women in Boston, such as the patroness of The Glass Flowers, Mary Lee Ware, Putnam raised funds to purchase 60 acres (240,000 m2) at the site of The Serpent Mound in hopes to ensure its preservation.

The Ohio Historical Society designated the Arc of Appalachia Preserves system, a project of Highlands Sanctuary, Inc., as the managing agency of Serpent Mound from 2010 until March 2021.

[17] In 2011, archaeologists took the opportunity to excavate the property prior to installation of utility lines at The Serpent Mound State Memorial.

Cowan created a 56-inch by 72-inch (1,800 mm) map that depicted the outline of The Serpent Mound in relation to nearby landmarks, such as hills and rivers.

Cowan's information, in conjunction with Putnam's archaeological discoveries, has been the basis for all modern investigations of The Serpent Mound.

The museum features exhibits that include explanations of the effigy's form, description of the construction of the mound, and the geographical history of the area.