Early American Cultures - Adena Culture

The mound- building tradition in the Americas had begun in North America's 'Middle Archaic' period, around 3500 BC, when the people responsible were still hunter-gatherers. Their Native American successors throughout the subsequent 'Woodland' period all practiced farming and animal husbandry, and their collective cultures covered the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River and its various (many) tributaries, and the Ohio river valley.

The Woodland period also provides an umbrella for the Adena culture in Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, and parts of Pennsylvania and New York in what is now the USA, a period which similarly covers the Marksville culture, and the Baytown culture which succeeded it.

The type site is the Adena mound which is located near Chillicothe, Ohio, which was named by the local nineteenth century AD landowner, Thomas Worthington. Excavations there have revealed sophisticated artistry, the use of copper, mica artefacts, and participation in a widespread trade network. Other major sites include Criel Mound (South Charleston, West Virginia), Grave Creek Mound (Moundsville, West Virginia), and Miamisburg Mound (Miamisburg, Ohio).

Dates for the Adena generally cover the approximate period between 500 BC and AD 100, although 1000-200 BC have been given as an alternative (the date of 1000 BC is the starting point for the Early Woodland period). Adena people were not fully sedentary, although that practice would increase, notably during the Adena's successor culture, the Hopewell. Even so they form part of what is termed the 'Eastern Agricultural Complex'.

The people of the Adena buried their dead upon the bones of their ancestors, thereby building their conical mounds in the vertical direction. The later Hopewell people would move away from extreme verticality to build their mounds horizontally.

Despite that change, Adena traditions largely persisted through the subsequent Hopewell and its own successor, the Fort Ancient culture, one of the regional Mississippian mound-building cultures. The famous Serpent Mound in Peebles, Ohio, may or may not have been a Fort Ancient construction: some archaeologists link it instead to the Adena, and the apparent regression of Fort Ancient capabilities would tend to support this.

Lasting traces of the Adena are still to be seen in the remains of their substantial earthworks. Larger Adena mounds once numbered in the hundreds, but only a small number of those larger Adena earthen monuments still survive. Such mounds generally ranged in size from six metres in diameter to ninety-one metres, serving as burial structures, ceremonial sites, historical markers and, possibly, gathering places. They were built using hundreds of thousands of baskets of especially-selected, graded soil.

According to archaeological investigation, Adena earthworks were often built as part of Adena burial rituals, in which the soil of the earthwork was piled immediately on top of a burned mortuary building. The building itself was intended to keep and maintain the dead until their final burial was performed.

After its construction, and prior to being burned and covered in soil, grave and other goods would be placed on the floor of this building, thereby honouring the dead within. The earthwork would then be constructed, and often a new mortuary structure would be placed on top of the new earthwork. A series of repetitions of this nature would eventually form a prominent earthwork. In the later Adena period circular ridges were sometimes constructed around the burial earthworks, although their function is not yet known.

The people of the Adena also carved small stone tablets, usually around ten centimetres by eight, and about a centimetre thick. One or both of the flat sides contained gracefully-composed and stylised zoomorphs or curvilinear geometric designs in deep relief. Paint has been found on some Adena tablets which has led to the proposal that these stone tablets were probably used to stamp designs onto cloth or animal hides, or onto people themselves, perhaps as outlines for tattooing.

The Americas

Early Cultures

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