The Ohio Hopewell Culture

 

 

Seip Mound State Memorial, excavation of House 4. OHS, 1974. The wall profile shows the low height of the mounds covering the series of structures found in this area within the Great Circle. These mounds were protected from erosion by their inclusion within the state park in the 1920s. Mounds of this size no longer exist in the heavily farmed areas.

 

Seip Mound State Memorial, House 4, view facing north. OHS, 1974. Reconstructed House 3 is adjacent.

 
Seip Mound State Memorial, excavations of House 4. OHS, 1974. The contents of the series of pit features found along the east side of the structure are shown next to each pit. It is not unusual to find carefully dug features which have been filled by presumably Hopewell users with rocks, gravels, or other soils, but not with either artifacts or datable materials.

 

Seip Earthworks, farm field immediately west of Seip Mound State Memorial. CMNH radar survey, 1980. Seip Pricer Mound is in the background.

 

Seip Earthworks, Locality 23. CMNH excavations, 1980. Excavations in progress, large prepared hole at the northern edge of an extensive plaza like prepared floor west of OHS Houses 1 7. A large post had probably been removed from this hole before it and the prepared floor were covered with a layer of small yellow gravels, a typical Ohio Hopewell mound stratum.

 

Salvage excavations at Raymond Ater Mound. Ohio Historical Society, 1948. Raymond Baby (right) and Richard Morgan working on the floor. This mound was discovered as the site was being bulldozed to provide a level area for new construction. Note the shell beading on the small blanket which covered an infant burial.

 

Site model. Mound City Group National Monument, National Park Service. Approximately two dozen mounds are associated with a simple enclosure which Squier and Davis named Mound City. The shape of this wall repeats one of the common floor plans found in the wooden structures found under mounds here and at other sites. A few mounds were conjoined (e.g. 3, 17, 18), but most were separate. Several mounds, not in the model, were outside the enclosure. Note the borrow pits on the outside of the wall.

 

Excavation of Mound 10, Mound City, the Ohio Historical Society for the National Park Service, 1963. This mound, which had not been previously excavated, is more representative in size of many known Ohio Hopewell mounds than Seip Pricer or Edwin Harness.

 

Post pattern found under Mound 4, Mound City, OHS excavations for the National Park Service, 1974. Note the double row of posts on the longer sides. Similar floor plans have been found at other Scioto sites, both as separate structures (Slide 23) and as parts of larger complex structures (Slide 14).


Post pattern found under Mound 17, Mound City, OHS excavations for the National Park Service, 1968. In addition to the rounded rectangular ground plan, small structures with trapezoidal, simple parallelogram, circular or oval shapes have been recorded here at Mound City and at other Ohio Hopewell sites

 
Midden beneath the south wall, Mound City, OHS excavations for the National Park Service, 1963.

 

 

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