Hopewell: Woodland Period, Woodland Culture Area of the Eastern US

Added August 27, 2000. Updated September 6, 2004. 00:58 -5 GMT.

This page will be refined and improved as deemed necessary and useful.

There is relatively little readily available information in many parts of the world on American archaeology. This Internet page aims to inform and facilitate Comparative Archaeology as defined on the home page of the Comparative Archaeology WEB©.

The Hopewell

Version 2.0

Maximilian O. Baldia

Geography

The type-site is the “Hopewell Group,” an earthwork complex with mounds and enclosures located northwest of Chillicothe, Ohio. It is named after a farm once owned by Captain M. C. Hopewell.

The Hopewell used to be considered one culture, but the wide distribution and regional variation led to the concept of an interaction sphere. Selected Hopewell sites are found on the Map of Adena, Hopewell, Mississipian and Fort Ancient archaeological sites. The interaction sphere covers most of the Eastern Woodland Culture Area, particularly the Ohio and Illinois River Valleys, reaching as far west as Kansas City.

The Hopewell interaction sphere procured raw materials and artifacts from as far away as the Rocky Mountains, the Great Lakes and the Atlantic coast, including the Golf of Mexico.

The Classic Hopewell of the Heartland

The “heartland” of the (“classic”) Hopewell is in south-central Ohio. The greatest number of complex enclosures occur from Cincinnati and Portsmouth via Chillicothe and Newark to Marietta. There are slight variations of the cultural manifestations, centering on the river valleys, such as the Great Miami River and the Scioto River.

The Kansas City Hopewell

At the western edge of the Hopewell interaction sphere are the Kansas City Hopewell. Professor Dr. Michael Fuller of St. Louis Community College – Meramec has kindly provided permission to link to his web pages for the following sites. The web pages contain pictures of artifacts, brief site reports, radiocarbon dates, and additional links.

The Renner site (23PL1) in Riverview, Kansas City, Missouri is one of a several sites near the junction of Line Creek and the Missouri River. The site contains Hopewell and Middle Mississippian remains.

The Young site (23PL4) in the Brush Creek valley at the Missouri River Bluff line is located 8 miles (13 km) to the west of the Renner Site.

The Trowbridge site (14WY1) near Kansas City is close to the western limit of the Hopewell, whose typical pottery and stone tools occur primarily in the Illinois and Ohio River Valleys.

Cloverdale (23BN2) is situated at the mouth of a small valley that opens into the Missouri River Valley, near St. Joseph, Missouri. It is a multi-component site with Kansas City Hopewell (ca. AD 100 to 500) and Steed Kisker (ca. AD 1200) occupation.

Mid South and Lower Mississippi Valley

The Marksville site of Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, lends its name to the Middle Woodland period (Marksville Phase of the Mid South and Lower Mississippi valley. Marksville consists of a large C-shaped causewayed enclosure, a circular enclosure, another embankment, and numerous mounds, including circular and rectilinear flat-top mounds.

Similar enclosures in the Yazoo Basin in Mississippi include Little Spanish Fort.

The largest Middle Woodland site in the Southeast is a complex ca. 160 ha large site with a geometric, circular enclosure and at least twelve mounds, known as Pinson Mounds. The site is located 20 km (12.5 miles) south of Jackson, Tennessee, at the South Fork and the Forked Dear River.

General Chronology

The Hopewell develop in the Middle Woodland period and end in the early part of the Late Woodland (ca. 100 BC to AD 500). Radiocarbon dates for many of the important Hopewell sites are listed in Table 1. Dates vary somewhat by region (see for example the Ohio Historical Society’s Timeline).

The Hopewell radiocarbon dates overlap with those of the preceding Adena. Artifacts from both also seem co-occur on many sites. Thus, Cochran (1996) argues for a convergence or continuing transition from Adena to Hopewell in the Anderson Mound Group and the New Castle earthworks of eastern Indiana. However, the relationship between the two cultures is debated, and neither the archaeological data nor C¹⁴ dates provide indisputable conclusions.

The transition from Hopewell to various Late Woodland archaeological manifestations (cultures, phases, etc.) is perhaps even more problematic. Some researchers see a continuous development (on the Muskingum River in Northeast Ohio).[1] Others argue for cultural or even ethnic discontinuity based on archaeological evidence and linguistic information.[2] The problem of proving cultural continuity or discontinuity appears to be a dilemma faced by New as well as Old World archaeology.

The Mound Builders

The beginning of native US monumental architecture is currently being reevaluated. The first monumental structures may have started in the Middle Archaic, as early as 4500 – 4000 cal BC. More intensive mound building occurs during the Early Woodland Period among the Adena, which overlap with Hopewell geographically and chronologically.

Enclosures and Mounds

During the Middle Woodland Period the people of the Hopewell interaction sphere built variously shaped mounds, as well as rectilinear, circular and even more complex enclosures and ceremonial avenues (“graded ways”), especially in Ohio. A ceremonial road or avenue dubbed the Great Hopewell Road, by Brad Lepper, is suggested to have connected the Earthworks of Chillicothe with those of Newark. While the geometric earthworks are found in the wide river valleys (bottom lands), irregularly shaped embankments are found on hilltops.

One of the more puzzling sites was reported when Marietta, Ohio, was founded 1788. At that time Rufus Putman drew a rough map of the site, showing several rectilinear (linear, rectangular, trapezoidal) and one or more circular structures and at least two enclosures.[3] A refined map was produced by Whittlesey in 1837.[4] It shows that the larger enclosure had a man a made ramp or graded way, leading to the Muskingum River (about 1 Mile or 1.6 km from the Ohio River). The site includes flat-top mounds, reminding antiquarians of the Central American truncated pyramids. Later archaeologists thought they were temple mounds (supporting house of worship on its flat top, as opposed to a burial mound), belonging to the Mississippian Period. The Washington County Library was ultimately built into the Library or Capitolum Mound. In 1990 archaeological excavations were conducted in a small area of this mound, prior to the installation of the new elevator for the library. This showed that the mound was most likely built between 60AD – 240AD. This means, that even these late looking structures were created the Hopewell during the Woodland Period.

Adjacent to the large enclosure is another roughly rectangular, but smaller enclosures with four internal round mounds near the entrances. Additional linear earthworks are built from this enclosure in the direction of the circular mound surrounded by a ditch. This structure may be older, possibly dating to Adena times.

The mound clusters and/or enclosures are viewed as ritual central places for a dispersed hamlet system. The architecture is first made of soil and wood, followed by a later addition of stone. In the Late Woodland “large” villages with wooden stockades or palisades replace the dispersed settlement pattern with its central earthworks. Similar, ideas have been expressed about the development of the Central and North European Neolithic/Copper Age Funnel Beaker culture enclosures, long-barrows and megalithic tombs.

Ultimately, the decline of Hopewell earthwork construction still seems to be unclear as is the ensuing culture change. Some time after the demise of the Hopewell, mounds shaped in the form of birds, animals and reptiles were constructed in parts of the US Midwest. In southern Ohio the Fort Ancient people constructed the Serpent Mound around AD 1075. Similarly, the Mississippian culture built various mounds and palisaded enclosures.

Foragers or Farmers?

What fascinates Old World archaeologists about the monumental Architecture of the Hopewell, is that their economy is thought to be that of hunter-gatherers, rather than farmers. This contradicts the notion that such architecture develops with agriculture, which permits a food surplus. A sustained surplus permits activities beyond food procurement, freeing humans to engage in other activities, including the construction of earthworks. Nonetheless, the view that Hopewell earthworks were built by hunter-gatherers has become predominant in North America, because there has been little evidence of domesticated plant use, including maize. (Maize is more commonly known as (Indian) corn in the US. This has led to the paradigm that the Hopewell earthworks are empty centers for a dispersed population. However, recent pollen analysis at the non-geometric Fort Ancient earthwork suggests considerable use of other domesticated plants.[5]

Hopewell Enclosure, Mounds Artifact and Map Index

Click here: Index of pictures and drawings of earthworks, artifacts, and maps.

References

Carskadden, Jeff and James Morton

1996 The Middle Woodland – Late Woodland transition in the Central Muskingum Valley of eastern Ohio: A view from the Philo Archaeological District. In Pacheco (Ed.) 1996:316-338.

Cochran, Donald R.

1996 The Adena/Hopewell convergence in East Indiana. In Pacheco (Ed.) 1996:340-352.

Connolly, Robert P.

1996 Prehistoric land modification at the Fort Ancient Hilltop Enclosure: A model of Formal and accretive development. In Pacheco (Ed.) 1996:257-273.

Greber, N'omi

1999 Correlating Maps of the Hopewell Site. Hopewell Archaeology News Letter 3/2, October 1999. (Accessed June 3, 2001. Web site abandoned?)

Mainford, Robert C. Jr.

1996 Pinson Mounds and the Middle Woodland in he Midsouth and Lower Mississippi Valley. In Pacheco, Paul J. (Ed.) 1996.

McDonald, Jerry N. and Susan L. Woodward

1986 Indian Mounds of the Middle Ohio Valley: A Guide to Adena and Ohio Hopewell Sites. McDonald & Woodward Publishing Co. Blacksburg, Virginia.

McLauchlan, Kendraa

2003 Plant cultivation and forest clearance by prehistoric North Americans: pollen evidence from Fort Ancient, Ohio, USA. The Holocene 13/4, 2003:557-566

Pacheco, Paul J. (Ed.)

1996 A View from the Core: A Synthesis of Ohio Hopewell Archaeology. The Ohio Archaeological Council, Columbus, Ohio.

Packard, William H.

1996 1990 excavation at Capitolum Mound (33WN 13), Marietta, Washington County, Ohio: A working evaluation. In Pacheco (Ed.) 1996:274-285.

Riordan, Robert V.

1996 The enclosed hilltops of Southern Ohio. In Pacheco (Ed.) 1996:242-253.

Ruby, Bret J.

1998 Current Research at Hopewell Culture National Historical Park. Hopewell Archaeology News Letter 2/2, April 1997. (Accessed June 3, 2001, Web site abandoned?)

Squire, E. G. and E. H. Davis

1848 Ancient Monuments of the Mississipy Valley. Smithsonian Institution. New York and Cincinnati.

Links

Maslowski, Robert F., Charles M. Niquette and Derek M. Wingfield

1995 The Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia Radiocarbon Database (Published in 1995, the article appeared originally in the West Virginia Archeologist (Volume 47:1-2). (Database in HTML format http://www.crai-ky.com/reports/c14database-1.htm. Web site accessed Feb. 18, 2002. Web site is now defunct.)

Hancock, John E. (Project Director)

2000 Earthworks: Digital Exploration of the Ohio Ancient Valley.Center for Electronic Reconstruction of Historical and Archaeological Sites (CERHAS), University of Cincinnati. (Added November 7, 2000)

Lepper, Bradley

1996 Searching for the Great Hopewell Road: The Search Continues

Please send comments or questions to Max Baldia.

[1] Jeff Carskadden and James Morton 1996:318-338

[2] cf. Charles M. Niquette and Jonathan P. Kerr report on the Parkline site of Putnam County, West Virginia. (http://archnet.uconn.edu/regions/midatlantic/parkline/parkline.html accessed 2000 - URL abandoned since 2001)

[4] Squire and Davis 1948:73-76, Plates XXVI and Fig. 17