The Ohio Hopewell

The history of archaeological field work in Ohio is a significant part of the history of American archaeology. A major theoretical problem of the nineteenth century was the identification of the builders of the many mounds and enclosures found in the Mississippi River drainage, particularly in the river valleys of southern Ohio. These monuments were first encountered by Euro Americans at the end of the eighteenth century as they crossed the Appalachians in their westward expansion. Excavations in Ohio monuments began early in the nineteenth century. The amount and reliability of the data recovered grew during the century as field work expanded, techniques evolved, and museums became established to curate materials and documents. By the end of the century, on the basis of collections in the Smithsonian, the Harvard Peabody Museum, the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, and the Ohio Historical Society archaeologists clearly demonstrated the prehistoric North American roots of the Ohio monuments (as opposed to pre Columbian European contacts). They also could begin to sort out separate prehistoric cultures within southern Ohio, one of which has been called Hopewell.

The excavations of the Edwin Harness mound, which began in the 1840s and continues, form a history in miniature of Ohio field archaeology (Slides 4 14). This mound is within the Great Circle of the geometric earthwork in the lower right hand corner of the map of the central Scioto region published by Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis in 1848 (Slide 2). The earliest of the systematic explorers, Squier and Davis generally tested mounds using a centrally located shaft dug from mound top to mound base, or floor. Due to the size of Edwin Harness, which is one of the larger Ohio Hopewell mounds, they dug two such test excavations in it. In 1884 Frederick Putnam of the Peabody Museum, Harvard expanded the data recovered by digging a narrow trench to the mound floor from within the northern edge to the center of the mound, and by obtaining artifacts and information from local collectors.

In 1896 Warren K. Moorehead, in a personal style, literally tunneled about in the southern end of the mound. William Mills, Moorehead's successor at the Ohio State Historical and Archaeological Society, developed a field recovery technique which used a series of trenches across the mound remnant. The back dirt from the working trench was thrown behind the workers onto the base of the earlier trench.

In 1976 and 1977 salvage work by the Cleveland Museum of Natural History on the mound remnant, which was then essentially at ground level, was able to apply modem laboratory analyses to identify and date samples recovered from still intact sections of the mound. Evidence of all the earlier excavations was encountered by the CMNH crews, thus adding an element of historical archaeology to the prehistoric.

The only other major nineteenth century field crews in Ohio came from the Smithsonian Institution in the 1890s. Their work included a partial re survey of the geometric enclosure which surrounded the Edwin Harness Mound, but no excavations in any of the associated mounds.

Frederick Putnam's other Ohio projects include the presentation of the Serpent Mound site in Adams County to the state of Ohio and the planning and supervision of long term field work in the Little Miami Valley. The records and artifacts curated from this work, which include excavations at the Turner Group, form the best documented data base on Ohio Hopewell from the nineteenth century. In the early part of this century, Mills excavated and published extensively on his work in south central Ohio. Henry Shetrone carried on the field techniques of William Mills until 1930.

Modem field work on Hopewell sites in Ross County continues under the direction of the Ohio Historical Society and other institutions including the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Kent State University.

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