Toltec Mounds
Illustrated overview of the site
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 Shown within Arkansas
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| Location |
Scott, Arkansas, Lonoke County, Arkansas,  USA
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| Region | Lonoke County, Arkansas |
| Coordinates | 34°38′49″N 92°3′55″W / 34.64694°N 92.06528°W |
| History | |
| Founded | 600 CE |
| Abandoned | 1050 CE |
| Cultures | Plum Bayou culture |
| Site notes | |
| Architecture | |
| Architectural styles | platform mounds, burial mounds, plazas |
| Architectural details | Number of monuments: |
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Toltec Mounds Site
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| NRHP reference # | 73000382 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | January 12, 1973 |
| Designated NHL | June 2, 1978 |
| Responsible body: State | |
Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park (3 LN 42), also known as Knapp Mounds, Toltec Mounds Site or Toltec Mounds, is an archaeological site from the Late Woodland period in Arkansas that protects an 18-mound complex with the tallest surviving prehistoric mounds in Arkansas. The site is on the banks of Mound Lake, an oxbow lake of the Arkansas River. It was occupied by its original inhabitants from 600 to 1050 CE. The site is designated as a National Historic Landmark.
The identification of the site with the Toltec of Mexico was a 19th-century mistake. Mrs. Gilbert Knapp, owner of the land from 1857 to 1900, thought the Toltecs had built the mounds.
Investigations at the site by archaeologist Edward Palmer from the Smithsonian Institutions Bureau of American Ethnology in 1883 and by others since have proved that the indigenous ancestors of regional Native Americans had built these mounds and all other mounds within the present-day United States. They were part of mound building cultures that flourished from the Late Archaic period into the Protohistoric period. They built earthwork mounds for religious, political and ceremonial purposes, connecting them to their cosmology.
The people who built the mounds at the Toltec site had a culture distinct from other contemporary Native American groups in the Mississippi Valley. Archaeologists named theirs the Plum Bayou culture, after a local waterway. Plum Bayou sites are found throughout the White River and Arkansas River floodplains of central and eastern Arkansas, but are also found as far west as the eastern Ozark Mountains. Toltec is the largest site of the Plum Bayou culture. Their relationships with neighboring cultures such as the Coles Creek culture to the south and Fourche Maline culture to the southwest are still under investigation. The people lived in permanent villages and hamlets throughout the countryside. They built sturdy houses, farmed, gathered wild plants, fished, and hunted.
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