In the 23 October Columbus Dispatch, columnist John Switzer features the Fort Ancient Earthworks and the idea that this grandest of monumental hilltop enclosures was a place of pilgrimage for the Hopewell culture 2,000 years ago.
He quotes site manager Jack Blosser who suggests we think of the earthwork as a church – but not just any church. The scale of Fort Ancient could accommodate a vast congregation. Three-and-a-half miles of earthen embankments enclose about 100 acres of ceremonial space. This is far more space than would be needed to serve the needs of the local population, so this may have been built for big ceremonies that attracted celebrants from hundreds of miles away. This could explain the wealth of exotic raw materials brought to Ohio Hopewell sites from across North America – copper from the Great Lakes, mica from the Carolinas, shells from the Gulf of Mexico, and obsidian from Wyoming. Perhaps these precious materials wer
e offerings brought by pilgrims from distant lands.
According to Jean and Joyotopaul Chaudhuri, writing in A Sacred Path: the Way of the Muscogee Creek, the oral traditions of the Creek Indians refer to their ancestors making pilgrimages in the spring and autumn to "special mounds." The Muskogoee Creek tribe was part of a coalition of tribes that lived in the area now encompassed by the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Perhaps it was their ancestors that brought the mica to the Ohio pilgrimage centers.
John points out that ancient DNA obtained from the teeth of a few individuals from the Hopewell Mound Group near Chillicothe has revealed genetic connections with modern tribes from across much of North America – from tribes as diverse and widespread as the Apache, Micmac, Ojibwa and Yakima. This is another clue to the cosmopolitan nature of the Hopewell earthworks. People came from far and wide to Fort Ancient bearing offerings of exotic raw materials. Some may stayed and married into local tribes. Others may have returned home with a wife or husband from Ohio. John writes, “Imagine if DNA from other mounds were to be compared. Perhaps other tribes would also be linked to the Hopewell.”
The importance of Fort Ancient as a place of special power was recognized long past the end of the Hopewell culture at around A.D. 400 and pilgrimages continued into the historic era. Warren K. Moorehead, the Ohio Historical Society’s first Curator of Archaeology and the person most responsible for the fact that Fort Ancient has been preserved as a public park, recorded a story heard in his youth that the pioneer Simon Kenton often had observed groups of Shawnee Indians visiting “the place en route to the Ohio” in order to pay “homage to the spirits of its makers.”
Make your own pilgrimage to Fort Ancient and the other magnificent surviving earthworks built by this great Native American culture.
Here’s the link to read John’s column in its entirety:
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/10/23/pilgrimage-unearths-hopewells.html
The DNA evidence to which John refers is summarized in previous OHS Archaeology blog entries:
Ancient DNA from the Ohio Hopewell
http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/2006/06/ancient-dna-from-ohio-hopewell.html
Ancient DNA from the Illinois Hopewell
http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/2006/10/ancient-dna-from-illinois-hopewell.html
He quotes site manager Jack Blosser who suggests we think of the earthwork as a church – but not just any church. The scale of Fort Ancient could accommodate a vast congregation. Three-and-a-half miles of earthen embankments enclose about 100 acres of ceremonial space. This is far more space than would be needed to serve the needs of the local population, so this may have been built for big ceremonies that attracted celebrants from hundreds of miles away. This could explain the wealth of exotic raw materials brought to Ohio Hopewell sites from across North America – copper from the Great Lakes, mica from the Carolinas, shells from the Gulf of Mexico, and obsidian from Wyoming. Perhaps these precious materials wer
e offerings brought by pilgrims from distant lands.According to Jean and Joyotopaul Chaudhuri, writing in A Sacred Path: the Way of the Muscogee Creek, the oral traditions of the Creek Indians refer to their ancestors making pilgrimages in the spring and autumn to "special mounds." The Muskogoee Creek tribe was part of a coalition of tribes that lived in the area now encompassed by the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Perhaps it was their ancestors that brought the mica to the Ohio pilgrimage centers.
John points out that ancient DNA obtained from the teeth of a few individuals from the Hopewell Mound Group near Chillicothe has revealed genetic connections with modern tribes from across much of North America – from tribes as diverse and widespread as the Apache, Micmac, Ojibwa and Yakima. This is another clue to the cosmopolitan nature of the Hopewell earthworks. People came from far and wide to Fort Ancient bearing offerings of exotic raw materials. Some may stayed and married into local tribes. Others may have returned home with a wife or husband from Ohio. John writes, “Imagine if DNA from other mounds were to be compared. Perhaps other tribes would also be linked to the Hopewell.”
The importance of Fort Ancient as a place of special power was recognized long past the end of the Hopewell culture at around A.D. 400 and pilgrimages continued into the historic era. Warren K. Moorehead, the Ohio Historical Society’s first Curator of Archaeology and the person most responsible for the fact that Fort Ancient has been preserved as a public park, recorded a story heard in his youth that the pioneer Simon Kenton often had observed groups of Shawnee Indians visiting “the place en route to the Ohio” in order to pay “homage to the spirits of its makers.”
Make your own pilgrimage to Fort Ancient and the other magnificent surviving earthworks built by this great Native American culture.
Here’s the link to read John’s column in its entirety:
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/10/23/pilgrimage-unearths-hopewells.html
The DNA evidence to which John refers is summarized in previous OHS Archaeology blog entries:
Ancient DNA from the Ohio Hopewell
http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/2006/06/ancient-dna-from-ohio-hopewell.html
Ancient DNA from the Illinois Hopewell
http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/2006/10/ancient-dna-from-illinois-hopewell.html
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10 comments:
To read more about the idea that the largest of the Hopewellian enclosures served as pilgrimage centers check out my 2006 paper on "The Great Hopewell Road and the role of the pilgrimage in the Hopewell Interaction sphere." In Recreating Hopewell, edited by D. K. Charles and J. E. Buikstra, pp. 122-133. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
The "genetic connections with modern tribes from across much of North America" are to be expected given the time depth. A simple count of ancestors illustrates this, 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc. In just 40 generations the number reached one trillion, so, of course, everyone is related given sufficient time depth.
Ideation divining what ancient people were thinking, such as "a place of special power" falls into the realm of pseudo-archaeology, especially when simple explanations such as trade suffice to explain material remains.
Unknown -- Your statement that widespread genetic connections simply could be a result of ordinary gene flow over time is a fair point. There is, however, very little evidence for conventional "trade" in the Ohio Hopewell. Enormous quantities of exotic material came into Ohio and little if anything seems to have been going in the opposite direction. The "ideation divining" to which you refer is simply the application of ethnographic analogy to an archaeological phenomenon to come up with hypotheses that can then be tested against the archaeological record. It is rather harsh to refer to this as "pseudo-archaeology."
Hi Brad -
I suspect that the Great Hopewell Road has connections with the sacbes of Meso-America, which is why B and D mt haplogroup DNA was recovered from "Hopewell" remains, along with C and a touch of X.
The main "Hopewell" source of copper was undoubtedly Copper Hill, Tennessee, quite near the source of their mica.
There are numerous possible sources of copper in eastern North America that the Hopwell culture might have exploited -- including copper nodules found in the glacial deposits of central Ohio.
The bulk of Hopewell copper, however, is thought to come from the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan where there is abundant evidence of prehistoric copper mining.
Hi Brad -
Yes.
Knowledge of the extent of the Copper Hill mining is only recent, and little excavation has been done at the mines there. For that matter, little excavation has been done on the nearby mica mines.
It has always been ASSUMED that "Hopewell" copper came from the Lake Superior deposits, while nearly no trace element analysis of artifacts has been done to determine the actual source of "Hopewell" copper.
Copper nodules were delivered from the Lake Superior deposits not only to Northern Ohio, but to the entire northern midwest by the glaciers.
One important gross diagnostic is that Copper Hill copper comes in sheets, while Lake Superior copper comes in very pure nodules.
Quote: "Enormous quantities of exotic material came into Ohio and little if anything seems to have been going in the opposite direction."
From my knowledge of Ohio archaeology, this is not quite true. I believe that Flint Ridge Flint from over east of Newark is found through out the US, from upper New York to Arizona. As for Fort Ancient, it stirred my imagination as a young boy, as my parents used to take us there several times a summer for picnics. It was a magical place with its earthen mounds and embankments. It is truly unfortunate that this is no longer the case. The park has been let to lapse back to nature, the wonderful displays in the old museum gone, all in the name of political correctness. Last time I was there, they charged $3.25 just to get in the park, and there were signs all over the place telling you to stay off the embankments. This 3.5 mile walk around the entire fort was always the highlight of the trip for us as kid. In another generation, the place will be forgotten, as children are no longer exposed to this wonderful place of discovery.
Hi Gary,
I'm sorry you feel that some of the magic is gone from Fort Ancient. I respectfully disagree.
As for the Hopewell "trade" network, while it is true that some Flint Ridge flint artifacts show up across the U.S., the quantities, as you get farther from Ohio, become smaller and smaller. At Pinson Mounds in Tennessee, for example, there is only a literal handful of Flint Ridge bladelets from the site, whereas one small mound at Newark yielded several bushels of mica cut outs.
I think the materials coming into Ohio are offerings of thanksgiving or supplication, while the very small quantities of Flint Ridge flint going out of Ohio are pilgrim's tokens -- souvenirs of the great hadj. If you look at pilgrimage as a cross-cultural phemonenon this is sort of thing you'd expect to see.
Nice post. I was checking continuously this blog and I am impressed! Extremely useful information specifically the last part :) scaling
Gary: i think the power 'magic' is still there. I've been digging with Bob Riordan for a couple weeks this summer. I was at the south overlook, playing my flute, Summer birds and insects droning in the background, when i red-tailed hawk rose from the river valley below and flew over. Coincidence? maybe. But inspiring none theless. There is still much about the site we don't understand. Don Corwin
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