The thousands of ancestral Indigenous mounds and earthworks of Eastern North America have long been a source of intrigue for diverse audiences. And although explanations have come a long way from the days of the Mound Builder Myth, there are avenues of inquiry that remain under-investigated. Here, we seek to let Indigenous ontologies lead the way by employing an interpretive lens based on bundling, a significant practice across many North American Indigenous peoples. We expand the notion of bundling to the landscape scale and, drawing on ethnohistoric and contemporary understandings of Anishinaabeg and Ho-Chunk ontologies, suggest that Great Lakes earthworks were brought into being for/through the bundling together of relationships between humans, other-than-human persons, and the land. This lens sets the scene for novel geospatial and statistical analyses of a legacy archaeological dataset of Late Precontact (ca. CE 1200–1600) earthworks in the Great Lakes, most of which have been destroyed. This study reinvigorates a fragmentary legacy data set, a practice that – during a time of pandemic-related restrictions on travel and field work – should become more prominent in archaeological investigations. This study illustrates the value of blending quantitative approaches and Indigenous ontologies to studies of landscape-scale processes and meanings.

长期以来，北美东部成千上万的祖传土丘和土方一直吸引着众多观众。尽管关于“土墩建造者”神话的解释已经有很长的路要走，但仍有一些调查途径尚未得到充分研究。在这里，我们试图通过使用基于捆绑的解释镜头来让土著本体论带头，这是许多北美土著人民的重要实践。我们将捆绑的概念扩展到景观范围，并借鉴民族历史学和当代对Anishinaabeg和Ho-Chunk本体论的理解，表明大湖区土方工程是为/通过将人与人之间的关系捆绑在一起而产生的人和土地。该镜头为大湖中晚期预接触（大约CE 1200–1600）土方遗留的考古数据集的新颖地理空间和统计分析奠定了基础，其中大部分已被破坏。这项研究重振了零碎的遗留数据集，这种做法在大流行病相关的旅行和田间作业限制期间，应在考古调查中变得更加突出。这项研究说明了将定量方法和土著本体相结合对于景观尺度过程和意义研究的价值。这种做法在大流行病引起的旅行和野外作业限制期间，应在考古调查中变得更加突出。这项研究说明了将定量方法和土著本体相结合对于景观尺度过程和意义研究的价值。这种做法在大流行病引起的旅行和野外作业限制期间，应在考古调查中变得更加突出。这项研究说明了将定量方法和土著本体相结合对于景观尺度过程和意义研究的价值。