Cavanaugh Mound is certainly an important archaeological resource and a prominent mound in this region or anywhere within the American Southeast. It appears to be a complete platform mound, and had apparently been "used" for at least two cycles of construction. Unlike other platform mounds in the region, though, it is alone on the landscape and appears to not have an associated residential area. Its intervisibility with Spiro and Skidgel sites, and similarity of viewshed overlooking the Poteau/Arkansas River bottoms is suggestive of a connection but not conclusive.

I have not addressed the question of dating in this paper simply because no dates exist for Cavanaugh Mound. Dollar (1948) mentions a single potsherd reportedly found in the field around the mound, but there includes no description of what it looked like, or whether it was even time-diagnostic. Orsbun noted seeing charcoal in the exposed profile during his 1991 visit to the site, but apparently took no samples. No datable material was noted during the 2004 investigations. The only way to date the mound at this point is to compare its size, shape, and internal structure to other area mounds. By these measures, it appears to be at least roughly contemporaneous with other Caddoan era platform mounds, but any more specific date would be speculation only. Unless datable material is recovered from within the mound itself, its timing will remain vague.

Similar to other platform mounds, Cavanaugh holds great potential for revealing various aspects of the social and ceremonial life of the people who constructed it. Rather than the typical discarded or displaced artifact debris so common in the archaeological record, mounds are monumental artifacts in primary context, constructed for the purpose of ritual. Sears (1961:227) terms this type of structure "fossilized ceremony". Mounds are thus one step closer to the human condition we try to understand as archaeologists: if we reconstruct the building techniques and sequences within and between mounds, we reconstruct something of the conceptual framework of the people who built them. We know so little about Cavanaugh Mound today that not much progress can be made along these lines, but because of its unique status as a solitary mound isolated from other structures or an associated settlement, and because it is so well preserved, Cavanaugh certainly holds promise along these lines in the future.