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Ohio Hopewell Culture
The Adena complex, in the middle and upper Ohio valley, is the most significant evidence of an Early Woodlands society in the last millennium B.C.E. The economy was based on hunting and fishing, and from 100 B.C.E. apparently also on the growing of squash, pumpkin, sunflowers, goosefoot and marsh elder. Burial mounds were constructed in several stages, with log-lined pits containing burials with fine grave goods, including smoking pipes. Mounds were constructed within large earthworks that were probably built for ceremonial and economic purposes, rather than as defensive strongpoints.
One or two double pots of this type have been recovered from mound sites. They are decorated with figures which represent aquatic and/or raptorial birds, suggesting the ancient Woodlands dichotomy between creatures of the upper and lower worlds.
Excavations in mounds in Ohio have uncovered superbly carved pipes and other exotic trade goods and fine artworks. The pipes may have been smoked for purification during rituals, and to ensure the good standing of the particular form of native government, whether clan, lineage, or larger grouping.
This tobacco pipe was made by the Hopewell people, and is in the shape of an otter's head. Otters were an important religious animal to the Hopewell, because they were equally at home on both land and in water. The tobacco was placed in a hole in the top of the otter's head, and the smoke breathed in through the flat base which is pierced with a hollow tube.
A number of pipes in the form of aquatic mammals were found at Mound City. They were to become important in perhaps the most significant archaeological debate of the mid-nineteenth century: were the mounds built by people related to the present-day Native population? If not, who built them?
The "Moundbuilder Myth"
Most American antiquarians thought that the scale and magnificence of the earthworks indicated that they had been erected by an unrelated people, the "Moundbuilders," whom the Native Indian replaced. To support their theory, they claimed that the otter pipes represented vegetarian manatees, living 1000 miles away in the seas around tropical Florida. The "Moundbuilder Myth" eased nineteenth-century guilt at the rapidly disappearing Indian population. Just as the Indians had replaced the Moundbuilders - perhaps coming from the Old World—so Americans, it was thought, would entirely replace Indians.
Suggested readings
J.C.H. King, Smoking Pipes of the North American Indian (London, The British Museum Press, 1977).
G. Milner, The Moundbuilders: Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America (London, Thames and Hudson, 2004).
S. Rafferty, and R. Mann, Smoking and Culture: The Archaeology of Tobacco Pipes in Eastern North America (Knoxville, The University of Tennessee Press, 2004).
© Trustees of the British Museum
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- What is goosefoot and marsh elder? I really didn't feel like this article gave me information. I felt like it just skimmed along the top and didn't go into any detail or background history on the Hopewell or other areas.(15 votes)
- It's true that this is quite a superficial article, but perhaps we can use it as a starting point, and look up anything that sparks our interest.
Here is an article I found interesting on crops in the region: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/16/6427.full it mentions marsh elder (related to the sunflower and has a nutritious seed), but not goosefoot, which is a name for the group of plants that includes quinoa.(4 votes)
- Why do people need to learn about this?(0 votes)
- Because art history and the history of those who inhabited these lands before us is entirely important as is all historically accurate information that we learn from other sources. And mostly because unless you are specifically interested in these topics you will not learn about them in school. My degree and subsequent career is specifically the study of Indigenous Art and Culture and all of this is extremely important to me.(11 votes)
- I would like to see a map of the area described as part of the article. And, a little background on the name "Hopewell". Are there "Hopewell" human remains, or coprolitefor DNA samples to compare with Native American groups today?(4 votes)
- A sketch of the Adena would be good.(2 votes)
- What would you do if your okay so he said yes would go(1 vote)
- Good idea. That's EXACTLY what I'd do, too.(2 votes)
- So I live in Salt Lake City, Utah. Some of the local folks here are using the Hopewell Culture as a new idea to support their book of mormon theories. Is there any evidence of more advanced metal working there? wheels, etc? Their theory of Central America as the location has been debunked. Oh yes, I see the DNA evidence is Asia? Any more info on that?(0 votes)
- I find that often when physical artifacts or historical documents are produced to validate claims made in sacred books (whether the Bible, the Book of Mormon, or the Holy Quran) the science gets degraded and the sacred texts get downgraded. Sacred texts exist to lift us above our mundane existence. Factuality is less important than how the stories we encounter in the texts form us as human beings. Hopefully they make us better people.(3 votes)
- Who is hopewell and why is he so famous?(0 votes)
- in the fifth paragraph, who really built the mounds?(0 votes)
- Did they have pipes in different shapes than otters? Also did the moundbuilders have their homes underground; if not did they have anything underground?
Thanks☺(0 votes)- The mounds were there for the sake of being mounds, and may have had a religious significance, or maybe a social one, or maybe not. Their importance lies in their being mounds, and being there. It's not in there being anything particular in or under them.
There are several mounds on the campus of Beloit College, in Wisconsin, which has a great program in anthropology. Even they have not bothered to excavate the mounds extensively because the mounds are just that, mounds.(0 votes)
- Is there a museum where I can find arctitecture like this?(0 votes)