Towosahgy State Historic Site
Towosahgy asks the visitor to rebuild a fortified Mississippian town from quiet ground: a central plaza, six surviving mounds, borrow pits, house depressions, and the buried line of repeated stockades.
Artwork inspired by Mississippian material culture
Between about A.D. 1000 and 1400, Towosahgy was a fortified village and civic-ceremonial center in Missouri’s Mississippi floodplain. Six of its seven earthen mounds still surround the central plaza. The largest, at the plaza’s north end, measures about 180 by 250 feet at its base and rises roughly 16 feet; nearby depressions mark places where earth was removed and carried by basket to build the mounds.
Archaeology also records shallow house floors, post trenches, hearths, and several episodes of stockade construction with projecting bastions. Those traces belong with evidence for maize, beans, squash, sunflowers, fishing, wild foods, and long-distance trade. “Towosahgy” is a borrowed Osage word meaning “Old Town,” not a securely recorded name used by the community itself.
- Town period
- Fortified Mississippian center, about A.D. 1000–1400
- Visible plan
- Six surviving mounds around a central plaza
- Largest mound
- About 180 × 250 feet at the base and 16 feet high
Quick guide
- Read negative space
- Use plaza, borrow pits, and house depressions—not mounds alone—to reconstruct the town
- Protect archaeological context
- Remain on the trail and never climb, dig, probe, or surface-collect
Reconstruct Towosahgy as a town rather than a mound checklist
- Begin inside the plaza
- Use the kiosk and site map to orient toward the broad central opening.
- Compare mound with borrow pit
- Find the largest north-end mound and then notice the depression west of it.
- Trace the missing architecture
- Look for mapped house depressions and the fortification line.
- Return daily life to the plan
- Connect fields outside the walls, floodplain fish and game, gathered fruits and nuts, and traded salt, paint, chert, and ceremonial materials with the houses and plaza.
Good to know
The site’s current name is interpretive shorthand: “Towosahgy” is a borrowed Osage term translated as “Old Town.” The community’s own name is not recorded, and “Mississippian” is an archaeological tradition label—not the name of a single tribe.
Notice these
- Central plaza enclosed by six surviving mounds
- North platform mound and adjacent borrow pit
- House-floor depressions
- Repeated stockade and bastion footprint