The Americas

Hopewell Culture (Middle Woodland Period) (North America)
c.AD 100 - 400

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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 Hopewell culture in the Ohio river valley. This cultural label can be applied more widely to eastern North American peoples during this people but its specific focus is in Ohio where it replaced the Adena culture and expanded its reach across a wide swathe of what is now the USA.

It was named after Warren K Moorehead's excavations on farmland in Chillicothe which was owned by Mordecai 'Cloud' Hopewell. The finds provided exhibits for Chicago's World Columbian Exposition of 1893.

Cultural traits included more elaborate burial practices, larger and more complex earthworks which tended to grow horizontally over time rather than vertically, a greater variety of exotic material which was obtained through widespread trade networks, and a more complex artistic style.

Whereas the people of the Adena buried their dead on the bones of their ancestors to create vertical mounds, those of the Hopewell moved away from extreme verticality to build their mounds horizontally. They generally viewed their earthworks as ceremonial centres. Although some were still used as mortuary sites with associated conical burial mounds, the dead were more likely to be cremated and were not always stacked on top of each other in succession.

Two types of earthworks were particular favourites of the Hopewell: geometric earthworks which often were extremely large, and hilltop enclosures which usually followed the contours of the landscape and consequently were often irregular in shape. Proportionally, geometric earthworks survive in greater numbers and generally seem to have been constructed more frequently than hilltop enclosures.

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(Information by Mick Baker and Peter Kessler, with additional information from Osage Texts and Cahokia Data, Alice B Kehoe (2007), from Mississippian Period: Overview, Adam King (New Georgia Encyclopaedia, 2002), from A Visit to Fort Ancient, Felix J Koch (Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society Publications: Vol 20, 1911, pp 248-252), and from External Links: Hieronymous Rowe's Hopewell Interaction Sphere map (Map of the Week), and Mississippian Period (Encyclopaedia of Alabama), and Timeline of Native American Cultures (Cuyahoga Valley National Park), and Siouan Tribes and the Ohio Valley, John R Swanton (American Anthropologist, Jan-Mar 1943, and available via AnthroSource), and Early Woodland Period - The Hopewell Culture (The Moundbuilders' Art: A Confluence of 'Ingenuity, Industry, and Elegance'), and Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks (Unesco).)

c.AD 100

The Adena culture is superseded by its successor, the Hopewell culture. Like their Adena predecessors, the people of the Hopewell culture build monumental and intricate earthworks which today continue to astound archaeologists.

The Adena culture emerged in the north-eastern corner of today's USA around 500 BC, to be succeeded around AD 100 by the much more widespread Hopewell culture (click or tap on map to view full sized)

c.100 - 400

The modern 'Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks' consists of a series of eight monumental earthen enclosure complexes which are built between AD 1-400 along the central tributaries of the Ohio River.

They are the most representative surviving expressions of the Hopewell culture. Their scale and complexity are evidenced in precise geometric figures as well as hilltops which are sculpted to enclose vast, level plazas.

There are alignments with solar cycles and the far more complex lunar cycles. These earthworks serve as ceremonial centres, and sites have yielded finely-crafted ritual objects which are fashioned from exotic raw materials which have been obtained through widespread trading networks.

The 'Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks' is a series of eight monumental earthen enclosure complexes built between two thousand years ago and sixteen hundred years ago along the central tributaries of the Ohio River in central-eastern North America