Mound in the context of Topography

A tumulus (pl.: tumuli) is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds, mounds, howes, or in Siberia and Central Asia as kurgans, and may be found throughout much of the world. A cairn, which is a mound of stones built for various purposes, may also originally have been a tumulus.

Tumuli are often categorised according to their external apparent shape. In this respect, a long barrow is a long tumulus, usually constructed on top of several burials, such as passage graves. A round barrow is a round tumulus, also commonly constructed on top of burials. The internal structure and architecture of both long and round barrows have a broad range; the categorization only refers to the external apparent shape.

Mehrgarh is a Neolithic archaeological site situated on the Kacchi Plain of Balochistan in Pakistan. It is located near the Bolan Pass, to the west of the Indus River and between the modern-day Pakistani cities of Quetta, Kalat and Sibi. The site was discovered in 1974 by the French Archaeological Mission in the Indus Basin led by the French archaeologists Jean-François Jarrige and Catherine Jarrige. Mehrgarh was excavated continuously between 1974 and 1986, and again from 1997 to 2000. Archaeological material has been found in six mounds, and about 32,000 artifacts have been collected from the site. The earliest settlement at Mehrgarh, located in the northeast corner of the 495-acre (2.00 km) site, was a small farming village dated from 7000 BCE or 5250 BCE (see below).

Pottery was produced in enormous quantities in ancient Rome, mostly for utilitarian purposes. It is found all over the former Roman Empire and beyond. Monte Testaccio is a huge waste mound in Rome made almost entirely of broken amphorae used for transporting and storing liquids and other products – in this case probably mostly Spanish olive oil, which was landed nearby, and was the main fuel for lighting, as well as its use in the kitchen and washing in the baths.

It is usual to divide Roman domestic pottery broadly into coarse wares and fine wares, the former being the everyday pottery jars, dishes and bowls that were used for cooking or the storage and transport of foods and other goods, and in some cases also as tableware, and which were often made and bought locally. Fine wares were serving vessels or tableware used for more formal dining, and are usually of more decorative and elegant appearance. Some of the most important of these were made at specialised pottery workshops, and were often traded over substantial distances, not only within, but also between, different provinces of the Roman Empire. For example, dozens of different types of British coarse and fine wares were produced locally, yet many other classes of pottery were also imported from elsewhere in the Empire. The manufacture of fine wares such as terra sigillata took place in large workshop complexes that were organised along industrial lines and produced highly standardised products that lend themselves well to precise and systematic classification.

In archaeology, a tell (from Arabic: تَلّ‎, tall 'mound, small hill') is an artificial topographical feature, a mound consisting of the accumulated and stratified debris of a succession of consecutive settlements at the same site, the refuse of generations of people who built and inhabited them and natural sediment.

Tells are most commonly associated with the ancient Near East but are also found elsewhere, such as in Southern Europe and parts of Central Europe, from Greece and Bulgaria to Hungary and Spain, and in North Africa. Within the Near East they are concentrated in less arid regions, including Upper Mesopotamia, the Southern Levant, Anatolia and Iran, which had more continuous settlement. Eurasian tells date to the Neolithic, the Chalcolithic and the Bronze and Iron Ages. In the Southern Levant the time of the tells ended with the conquest by Alexander the Great, which ushered in the Hellenistic period with its own, different settlement-building patterns. Many tells across the Near East continue to be occupied and used today.

Many pre-Columbian cultures in North America were collectively termed "Mound Builders", but the term has no formal meaning. It does not refer to specific people or archaeological culture but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks that indigenous peoples erected for an extended period of more than 5,000 years. The "Mound Builder" cultures span the period of roughly 3500 BCE (the construction of Watson Brake) to the 16th century CE, including the Archaic period (Horr's Island), Woodland period (Caloosahatchee, Adena and Hopewell cultures), and Mississippian period. Geographically, the cultures were present in the region of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River Valley, Florida, and the Mississippi River Valley and its tributary waters. Outlying mounds exist in South Carolina at Santee and in North Carolina at Town Creek.

The first mound building was an early marker of political and social complexity among the cultures in the eastern part of what is now the United States. Watson Brake in Louisiana, constructed about 3500 BCE during the Middle Archaic period, is the oldest known and dated mound complex in North America. It is one of 11 mound complexes from this period found in the Lower Mississippi Valley.These cultures generally had developed hierarchical societies that had an elite. These commanded hundreds or even thousands of workers to dig up tons of earth with the hand tools available, move the soil long distances, and finally, workers to create the shape with layers of soil as directed by the builders. However early mounds found in Louisiana preceded such cultures and were products of hunter-gatherer cultures.

Kościuszko Mound (Polish: kopiec Kościuszki) is an artificial mound in Kraków, Poland. It was erected by Cracovians in commemoration of the Polish national leader Tadeusz Kościuszko, and modelled after Kraków's prehistoric mounds of Krak and Wanda. A serpentine path leads to the top, approximately 326 metres (1,070 ft) above sea level, with a panoramic view of the Vistula River and the city.

A terp, also known as a wierde, woerd, warf, warft, werf, werve, wurt or værft, is an artificial dwelling mound found on the North European Plain that has been created to provide safe ground during storm surges, high tides and sea or river flooding. The various terms used reflect the regional dialects of the North European region.

Terps are found in the coastal regions of the Netherlands, particularly in the provinces of Zeeland, Friesland and Groningen, as well as in southern Denmark and northwestern Germany. Before the construction of dykes, these mounds provided protection against floodwaters that regularly disrupted daily life. They are especially common in East Frisia (Ostfriesland) and Nordfriesland in Germany. On the Halligen islands in Kries Norfriesland, people continue to live on terps without the protection of dykes. Terps are also present in the Rhine and Meuse river plains in central Netherlands. Further examples occur in North Holland, such as Avendorp near Schagen, and in the towns of Bredene and Leffinge near Oostende in Belgium. Additional terps are located at mouth of the IJssel River, including at Kampereiland in the province of Overijssel, as well as on the former island of Schokland in the Zuiderzee, now part of the reclaimed Noordoostpolder. An old terp, known as Het Torp is also located beneath the town of Den Helder in North Holland.

A platform mound is any earthwork or mound intended to support a structure or activity. It typically refers to a flat-topped mound, whose sides may be pyramidal.

Kankali Tila (also Kankali mound or Jaini mound) is a mound located at Mathura in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The name of the mound is derived from a modern temple of Hindu goddess Kankali. The famous Jain stupa was excavated here in 1890-91 by Alois Anton Führer (Dr. Führer).

The Union of Horodło or Pact of Horodło was a set of three acts signed in the town of Horodło on 2 October 1413. The first act was signed by Władysław II Jagiełło, King of Poland, and Vytautas, Grand Duke of Lithuania. The second and third acts were composed by the Polish nobility (szlachta) and Lithuanian boyars, respectively. The union amended the earlier Polish–Lithuanian unions of Krewo and Vilnius–Radom. Politically, Lithuania received more autonomy as, after the death of Vytautas, the Lithuanian nobles could choose another Grand Duke instead of passing the title to Władysław II Jagiełło or his heir. However, culturally, Lithuania and Poland grew closer. Lithuania adopted Polish institutions of castellans and voivodes. Catholic Lithuanian nobles and church officials were granted equal rights with the Polish nobles and clergy. Forty-seven selected Lithuanian nobles were adopted by Polish families and granted Polish coats of arms. Thus the union signified the beginnings of the Polonization of Lithuanian culture and the rise of the Lithuanian nobility. It was one of the major steps towards the modernization and Europeanization of Lithuania.

A kame, or knob, is a glacial landform, an irregularly shaped hill or mound composed of sand, gravel and till that accumulates in a depression on a retreating glacier, and is then deposited on the land surface with further melting of the glacier. Kames are often associated with kettles, and this is referred to as kame and kettle or knob and kettle topography. The word kame is a variant of comb (kame, or kaim is the Old Scottish word meaning 'comb'), which has the meaning "crest" among others. The geological term was introduced by Thomas Jamieson in 1874.

According to White, "kames were formed by meltwater which deposited more or less washed material at irregular places in and along melting ice. At places the material is very well washed and stratified; at others it is more poorly washed, with inclusions of till masses that fell from ice but were covered before they were completely washed. Kame gravels thus tend to be variable and range from fine to coarse grained and even to cobbly and boulder."

Watson Brake is an archaeological site in present-day Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, from the Archaic period. Dated to about 5400 years ago (approx. 3500 BCE), Watson Brake is considered the oldest earthwork mound complex in North America. It is older than the Ancient Egyptian pyramids or Britain’s Stonehenge. Its discovery and dating in a paper published in 1997 changed the ideas of American archaeologists about ancient cultures in the Southeastern United States and their ability to manage large, complex projects over centuries. The archeologists revised their date of the oldest earthwork construction by nearly 2000 years, as well as having to recognize that it was developed over centuries by a hunter-gatherer society, rather than by what was known to be more common of other, later mound sites: a more sedentary society dependent on maize cultivation and with a hierarchical, centralized polity.

The arrangement of human-made mounds at Watson Brake was constructed over centuries by members of a hunter-gatherer society. It is located near Watson Bayou in the floodplain of the Ouachita River, near present-day Monroe in northern Louisiana, United States. Watson Brake consists of an oval formation of eleven earthwork mounds from three to 25 feet (7.6 m) in height, connected by ridges to form an oval nearly 900 feet (270 m) across.

Horr's Island is a significant Archaic period archaeological site located on an island in Southwest Florida formerly known as Horr's Island. Horr's Island (now called Key Marco, not to be confused with the archaeological site Key Marco) is on the south side of Marco Island in Collier County, Florida. The site includes four mounds and a shell ring. It has one of the oldest known mound burials in the eastern United States, dating to about 3400 radiocarbon years Before Present (BP). One of the mounds has been dated to as early as 6700 BP. It was the largest known community in the southeastern United States to have been permanently occupied during the Archaic period (8000 BCE-1000 BCE).

The island is named for Capt. John Foley Horr, who raised pineapples on the island in the late 19th century. The Capt. John Foley Horr House was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on October 8, 1997. In the late 1980s, a development company planned to build a bridge to Horr's Island and develop it. In response to state law requiring an archaeological assessment of the island before it could be developed, the development company funded a research project. The research team carried out excavations for three months.

Town Creek Indian Mound (31 MG 2) is a prehistoric Native American archaeological site located near present-day Mount Gilead, Montgomery County, North Carolina, in the United States. The site, whose main features are a 15 feet high platform mound with a surrounding village and wooden defensive palisade, was built by the Pee Dee, a South Appalachian Mississippian culture people (a regional variation of the Mississippian culture) that developed in the region as early as 980 CE. They thrived in the Pee Dee River region of North and South Carolina during the Pre-Columbian era. The Town Creek site was an important ceremonial site occupied from about 1150—1400 CE. It was abandoned for unknown reasons. It is the only ceremonial mound and village center of the Pee Dee located within North Carolina.

The Pee Dee people shared the Mississippian culture that was characterized in part by building large, earthwork mounds for spiritual and political purposes. They participated in a widespread network of trading that stretched from Georgia through South Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and the mountain and Piedmont regions of North Carolina. The Town Creek site is not large by Mississippian standards. The earthwork mound was built over the remains of a rectangular-shaped earth lodge. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark on October 15, 1966, and is identified as reference number 66000594.

The Kincaid Mounds Historic Site (11MX2-11; 11PO2-10) c. 1050–1400 CE, is a Mississippian culture archaeological site located at the southern tip of present-day U.S. state of Illinois, along the Ohio River. Kincaid Mounds has been notable for both its significant role in native North American prehistory and for the central role the site has played in the development of modern archaeological techniques. The site had at least 11 substructure platform mounds (it ranks fifth among known sites of this period for the number of such structures), and 8 other monuments.

Artifacts from the settlement link its major habitation and the construction of the mounds to the Mississippian culture period. It is 140 miles from Cahokia, the major center of Mississippian culture in North America. The Kincaid site was also occupied earlier by indigenous peoples of the Late Woodland period. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964 for its significance as a major Native American mound center and prehistoric trading center along the Ohio River.

Effigy Mounds National Monument preserves more than 200 prehistoric mounds built by pre-ColumbianMound Builder cultures, mostly in the first millennium CE, during the later part of the Woodland period of pre-Columbian North America.Numerous effigy mounds are shaped like animals, including bears and birds.

The monument is located primarily in Allamakee County, Iowa, with a small part in Clayton County, Iowa, in the midwestern United States. The park's visitor center is located in Harpers Ferry, Iowa, just north of Marquette.In 2017, the Effigy Mounds were featured in the America the Beautiful Quarters Program.