Ohio Hopewell

The 1848 publication of Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley by Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis marks not only the jumping-off point for American archaeology as an academic discipline but the beginning of our nation's fascination with the mounds and earthworks of central Ohio and the ancient Americans who built them. Today we call these ancient Americans the Ohio Hopewell. They flourished in the fertile landscape of the middle Ohio Valley at roughly the same time as the Golden Age of the Roman Empire.

As the focal point of their research, Squier and Davis mapped and excavated dozens of mound and earthwork sites in south central Ohio, centering on Davis's hometown of Chillicothe, Ross County. Some of the mounds they excavated, like those at Mound City (now a National Park Service site designated Hopewell Culture National Monument at Mound City), contained impressive examples of artifact styles rich with symbolism based on geometric and zoomorphic designs. Not long after their seminal publication, these two nascent archaeologists had a falling out. Unfortunately for modern Americans, a large portion of their collection was sold by Davis to the Royal British Museum in London. Even today, many of the most beautiful carved Hopewell effigy pipes and mica cutouts from sites like Mound City are displayed in London, rather than in the United States.

As is common for many Neolithic-stage populations, the Ohio Hopewell mounds contain the tombs and bodies of the honored dead (predominantly, but not exclusively, males) for whom the monuments were built. Thus,America's earliest significant attempt at academic archaeology represents a glorified form of grave robbing. Ironically, archaeology most clearly reveals its delicate balance between the humanities and social science when it uses the dead for data, as both social role and social status are often well marked in burials. Today, the excavation of ancient human remains is restricted by the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act, passed in 1991 to redress over a century of mistreatment of Native American dead by a scientific community who viewed them as nothing more than specimens. Sadly for the ancient Hopewell dead whom they disturbed, the mound excavations of Squier and Davis would most likely not have been acceptable under the provisions of this Act. Nonetheless, their research set the stage for the next 150 years of Ohio Hopewell archaeology.