---
title: "C. and O. Mounds: Adena Burial Mounds in Johnson County"
slug: "the-c-and-o-mounds-johnson-county"
url: "https://kyhistorydrive.com/stories/the-c-and-o-mounds-johnson-county/"
era: "Prehistoric"
years: "500 BCE–250 CE"
county: "Johnson County"
counties: ["Johnson County"]
coordinates: "37.8° N, 82.8° W"
coordinates_precision: "approximate (rounded to 0.1 deg / ~11 km to protect a sensitive archaeological or cultural site)"
license: "CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)"
---

# C. and O. Mounds: Adena Burial Mounds in Johnson County

> In Johnson County, the C. and O. Mounds are two Adena burial mounds that William S. Webb dug and used to explain how Adena people lived.

## At a glance

- **When:** 500 BCE–250 CE
- **Where:** Johnson County
- **Coordinates:** 37.8° N, 82.8° W *(Approximate area — rounded to 0.1° to protect a sensitive site)*

## The story

In Johnson County, people of the [Adena culture](https://grokipedia.com/page/Adena_culture) raised two burial mounds about 1,600 feet apart. Adena is the name archaeologists give a way of life in the Ohio Valley during the [Early Woodland period](https://grokipedia.com/page/Woodland_period), not a tribe, and the builders left no name for themselves.

Their mounds were part of a tradition that stretched across central and eastern Kentucky. In the Depression years, University of Kentucky crews working under the Works Progress Administration excavated the two mounds, recorded as sites Jo 2 and Jo 9. William S. Webb published them in 1942 in [a University of Kentucky report on sites Jo 2 and Jo 9](https://core.tdar.org/document/176231), one of the long series of Kentucky reports that made Adena a household word among archaeologists.

Both mounds had been built over circular rings of paired posts. Webb had first recognized that pattern under the [Wright Mounds](https://kyhistorydrive.com/stories/wright-mounds-montgomery-county/) in Montgomery County and then found it at site after site, archaeologist R. Berle Clay writes in [The Essential Features of Adena Ritual](https://portola.press/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/clay-1998-adena-ritual.pdf). Overlapping post lines under the C. and O. mounds suggest the spot was used again and again over a long time.

Webb read the post circles as houses. In his view each mound was the grave of an important person, raised over a home, while small family hamlets were spaced nearby and lesser dead were cremated in the villages. Clay calls this the “C&O pattern,” and it shaped decades of thinking about how Adena people lived.

Later work has revised it. Modern digs have not found the villages Webb expected beside the mounds, Clay notes, and he argues the paired-post circles were ceremonial or mortuary structures, not everyday homes. Webb himself later leaned toward a different model, prompted by the Crigler mound and by enclosures like [Peter Village](https://kyhistorydrive.com/stories/peter-village-enclosure-15fa166/) in Fayette County, and he never fully reconciled the two.

## Kentucky today

The C. and O. Mounds are not a public site, so this site names them only at the county level, in Johnson County. Visitors can see other Adena earthworks at [public mound parks](https://kyhistorydrive.com/stories/ashlands-adena-mounds/) elsewhere in Kentucky.

## Sources & research notes

### Sources

1. tDAR: Webb 1942, sites Jo 2 and Jo 9, Johnson County on core.tdar.org [web] — https://core.tdar.org/document/176231
2. R. Berle Clay 1998, The Essential Features of Adena Ritual (PDF) on portola.press [web] — https://portola.press/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/clay-1998-adena-ritual.pdf
3. Grokipedia: Adena culture on Grokipedia [web] — https://grokipedia.com/page/Adena_culture

### Key facts & claims

- Site: Two mounds 1,600 ft apart in Johnson County, sites Jo 2 and Jo 9; excavated with WPA sponsorship, published by Webb 1942. [1][2]
- Paired-post circles: Both mounds over circular paired-post patterns, first recognized under Wright Mounds; overlapping alignments suggest reuse over time. [2]
- C&O pattern and revision: Webb: mound = important person over house, dispersed hamlets, cremated lesser dead (Webb 1942:361-362). Later digs found no villages; circles now read as mortuary structures. [2]

### Timeline

- **c. 500 BC–AD 250** — Adena mound building in the Ohio Valley (general range; no site-specific dates used) [3]
- **1942** — Webb publishes the C. and O. Mounds [1]
- **1998** — Clay's reassessment of the C&O pattern [2]

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Cite as: "C. and O. Mounds: Adena Burial Mounds in Johnson County." Kentucky History Drive. https://kyhistorydrive.com/stories/the-c-and-o-mounds-johnson-county/ Text licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.