Hopewell culture
The Hopewell culture [ 'hopwɛl- ] was an Indian culture in North America , mainly in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. In its heyday (300 BC - 500 AD) it extended from New York to Missouri and from Wisconsin to Mississippi , but also along the coast of Lake Ontario in Canada .
The culture is characterized by burial mounds known as mound and decorated ceramics. The typical ceramics and stone tools appear mainly in the valleys of Illinois and Ohio. Artifacts made of lead ore , but also bear claws , mica stone leaves and obsidian are added.
The culture owes its name to a site in Ohio, northwest of Chillicothe . It was owned by Captain M. C. Hopewell.
In the meantime, the expansive Hopewell culture is no longer viewed as a uniform culture, possibly with a closed rulership or ethnic background, but as an area of intensive exchange. Therefore, in research, one speaks of an interaction sphere . The assumption that it was a hunter-gatherer culture has recently been refuted.
chronology
The Hopewell culture originated during the Middle Woodland Period , the Middle Woodland Period , and ended in the early phase of the Late Woodland (approx. 100 BC to 500 AD), i.e. the Late Woodland Period . The earliest finds overlap with finds from the Adena culture and are sometimes even found together in one site. It is believed that Hopewell emerged from the Adena culture. It is currently not possible to clarify whether the culture was based on a continuously existing ethnic group or a language unit.
Distribution area
The core area
The core area of the culture is in south and central Ohio . The greatest density of finds is found in the area between Cincinnati and Portsmouth , Chillicothe , Newark and Marietta . The river culture on the Great Miami River differs from that on the Scioto River .
In Ross County alone there are groups of sites such as Seip , Baum , Frankfort , Chillicothe and Harness , the Dunlap and Hopeton groups, the High Bank Group , the Hopewell Group itself, the Cedar Bank Group and the Junction and Blackwater groups. The Mound City Group , which is less complex, has the highest concentration of mounds. It served at least partially as a burial place.
Kansas City Hopewell
This westernmost group includes localities such as the Renner Site in Riverview, Kansas City , Missouri, a group that includes several localities at the confluence of Line Creek and Missouri.
The Young Site is located 13 km west of the Renner Site in the Brush Cree Valley , and the Trowbridge Site near Kansas City . So far it is the westernmost site. Cloverdale, another site located near St. Joseph , Missouri, in a side valley of the Mississippi, was in use from about AD 100 to 500.
Middle and Lower Mississippi Valley
In Louisiana , the is Marksville site that for-Marksville phase of the middle South and the prevailing in the lower Mississippi Valley culture is eponymous. There are numerous mounds here, including circular, flattened mounds, but also camps, some of which are raised, and ramparts. Such facilities can also be found in the Yazoo Basin in Mississippi (Little Spanish Fort).
The largest find complex of the Middle Woodland Phase in the southeast covers 160 hectares and is located 20 km south of Jackson in Tennessee, on the South Fork and Forked Deer Rivers . These include a settlement-like structure and at least twelve mounds, which became known as Pinson Mounds .
Lake Ontario
Trading area
The people of the Hopewell culture acted on a large scale. There are shells from the Gulf of Mexico , mica from the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina , fossil shark teeth from Chesapeake Bay , copper from Isle Royale in Michigan and the Keweenaw Peninsula , plus obsidian from Yellowstone .
Building types
The most noticeable structures are the mounds, which can be round, angular or even polygonal. There are also graded ways, which are particularly common in Ohio. The Great Hopewell Road may have connected the Chillicothe earthworks to Newark's. While large, geometrically oriented structures were predominantly found in the larger valleys, irregular ground plans existed mainly on the hills.
Marietta in Ohio, which was discovered in 1788 when Rufus Putman sketched a map of the region, already shows several rectangular, trapezoidal structures, plus two camps or enclosures. The latter had a ramp or a ceremonial path. The site includes five flattened mounds that were thought to be temple mounts. The Washington County Library was built in one of these mounds . On the occasion of the construction of a new elevator in 1990, excavations were carried out which showed that the mound was older than expected. It was built between AD 60 and 240. A nearby settlement probably belonged to the Adena culture.
The oldest structures were made of wood and clay, but sometimes stone structures followed. In the late woodland, large palisade villages replaced the scattered settlements of earlier phases.
Funeral rites
The dead were placed on tree bark, tissue, or animal skins, then covered with branches or stones, which in turn were covered with bark, stakes, and earth. Some of the dead were buried alone, others in groups. Some were burned in sunken basins up to 30 cm deep and four feet by six feet. The ashes were placed in a shrine around which gifts, partly intact, partly destroyed, could be proven. The cremation and burial site was then covered. Only in Mound City and Tremper can it be proven that they were used exclusively for these burns.
Hunter-gatherer vs. Peasant culture
For a long time there was hardly any evidence of agricultural activities in the sense of growing cultivated plants. Hence, the Hopewell culture was believed to consist of hunters and gatherers who only gathered now and then in the vast complexes. However, pollen analyzes now show that domesticated plants grew around Fort Ancient .
The disappearance of culture
Why the culture disappeared is unclear. In many places, however, there is a settlement continuity even after AD 400. The Scioto River Valley was still populated. Groups immigrated from the north even took over the burial sites for their own dead. Hence they are called intrusive mound people . Around 1000 a people known as Fort Ancient inhabited the valley. They grew corn but were forced to leave the region around 1650 - probably harassed by Iroquois , who were superior with their Dutch rifles. Shawnee lived here in the 18th century .
literature
- A. Martin Byers: The Ohio Hopewell Episode: Paradigm Lost and Paradigm Gained . University of Akron Press, Akron, Ohio, 2004.
- Jerry N. McDonald / Susan L. Woodward, Indian Mounds of the Middle Ohio Valley: A Guide to Adena and Ohio Hopewell Sites, McDonald & Woodward Publishing Co. Blacksburg, Virginia 1986.
- Paul J. Pacheco (Ed.), A View from the Core: A Synthesis of Ohio Hopewell Archeology. The Ohio Archaeological Council, Columbus, Ohio 1996.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kendraa McLauchlan: Plant Cultivation and Forest Clearance by Prehistoric North Americans: Pollen Evidence from Fort Ancient, Ohio, USA , in: The Holocene 13/4 (2003) 557-566.