Book excerpt: When Mounds for the Dead was first published in 19063, it was the definitive study of the Adena culture, a burial-cult manifestation in the middle and upper Ohio Valley dating from about 1000 B.C. to 100 B.C. The work built upon hundreds of earlier articles as well as two major syntheses, The Adena People by Webb and Snow (1945) and The Adena People Number Two by Webb and Baby (1957). Now in its third printing Mounds for the Dead has become a classic; it is a must for anyone interested in the Adena people. Dragoo's analysis of the Adena culture opens with a site report of the Cresap Mound, Marshall County, West Virginia, which he excavated in 1958. This virtually intact prehistoric structure represented two periods of interment and contained artifacts associated with 54 burials. Following his description of the Cresap Mound excavations, Dragoo examines manifestations of the Adena burial-mound culture and discusses the origins of the Adena people, the development of their culture, and its relationship to other groups.