SPEND A DAY IN POMPEII AT THE CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

A Day in Pompeii is a collection of more than 250 priceless ancient artifacts from the Roman city of Pompeii and its surrounding areas. In A.D. 79, Pompeii, one of the world’s most unique archaeological sites, was frozen in time by the catastrophic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, which buried the city for more than 1,700 years. The ash and debris from Vesuvius’s unpredicted eruption destroyed the living city of Pompeii, but it also preserved it – like a fly in amber.

A Day in Pompeii brings room-sized frescos, marble and bronze sculptures, jewelry, gold coins, and body casts of the volcano's victims to the Cincinnati Museum Center’s 15,000-square-foot exhibition hall. Pompeii's archeological treasures rarely leave Italy, and this national touring exhibit marks the first time that these rare treasures will come to the region.

Don't miss this moving glimpse through a unique window on the ancient past.

The exhibit opens on March 2nd.

For more information about the exhibit, check out the Cincinnati Museum Center’s webpage:

http://www.cincymuseum.org/pompeii

FOLLOW THE ANCIENT OHIO TRAIL

Check out this video introduction to the wonders you will find along the Ancient Ohio Trail:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PWRFnPQt3I&noredirect=1

Shipwrecks, Archaeology and the War of 1812!

The Great Lakes Historical Society's Peachman Lake Erie Shipwreck Research Center (GLHS/PLESRC) and the Maritime Archaeological Survey Team (MAST) will be conducting their annual Nautical Archaeology Workshop April 14-15, 2012 at the Toledo Maritime Center (future home of the National Great Lakes Maritime Museum) 1701 Front Street, Toledo, Ohio followed by skills practice dives May 19 or 20 at White Star Quarry in Gibsonburg, Ohio. The workshop teaches divers and non-divers why underwater archaeology is important, how they can impact and protect Ohio's wrecks, techniques they will use during shipwreck surveys and much, much more. For a good idea of what the weekend will be like you can visit http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html .

In conjunction with the workshop, MAST will hold their annual dinner on the evening of April 14th at the Maumee Bay Lodge and Conference Center. This years Keynote Speaker is LeeAnne Gordon, nautical archaeologist and tall ships captain. Her topic will be Looking Aloft from Underwater: Sailing Rigs of War of 1812 Shipwrecks.

"Several War of 1812 era shipwrecks have been studied around the Great Lakes. Ms. Gordon has utilized her knowledge of sailing vessels, the archaeological remains of the Tecumseth and Newash, and analyzed contemporary texts to propose the sail plans of these War of 1812 era ships. Using these sail plans and what is known of the hull remains, the vessels show how, at the end of the war in 1815, ships were designed to possibly serve dual purposes: naval and merchant."

Both events are open to the diving and non-diving public. For more information on the workshop and dinner you can go to http://www.ohiomast.org/Webpages/PDF_Flyers/2012%20Workshop%20flyer.pdf

THE HISTORY OF COLUMBUS DID NOT BEGIN IN 1812

The Columbus Historical Society has a great new exhibit at COSI celebrating the bicentennial of the City of Columbus.

The Ohio Historical Society contributed a number of artifacts to the exhibit, including a 9,000-year-old flint spear point and a 1,000-year-old pottery vessel both found in the vicinity of Columbus.

These ancient tools remind us the history of Columbus did not begin in 1812. In fact, it began long before the city’s namesake, Christopher Columbus, is said to have discovered America. American Indians and their ancestors have been living here for more than 13,000 years and Columbus was their home long before it was ours!

We thank the Columbus Historical Society for acknowledging our ancient American Indian heritage in their new exhibit! And we are proud to have played a small part in telling this important part of the story.

For more information about the Columbus Historical Society and the COSI exhibit, check out the CHS webpage:

http://www.columbushistory.org/

TOP TEN REASONS WHY ARCHAEOLOGY ROCKS AT THE OHIO HISTORICAL SOCIETY: NUMBER ONE

1. Because when David Letterman has a question about Ohio archaeology, who does he call? That’s right! Us!

And if David Letterman trusts us to meet all of his archaeological needs, then you can, too!

OHS Archaeology -- Rocking Ohio's Past Since 1885!

Hocking College Archaeology Lab Tour

A few weeks ago OHS archaeology staff had the pleasure of visiting the Hocking College Archaeology Department at the Sauber Environmental Center. Pictured above from left to right are Dawn Walter-Gagliano (Lab Manager), Dr. Annette G. Ericksen (Archaeology Coordinator) and Brad Lepper and Bill Pickard from OHS.

During the visit we saw where artifacts from the 2008-2011 Hocking College field investigations at Pickawillany are stored. Pickawillany was a Miami Indian Village and English trader compound that was attacked by the French and Ottawa Indians on June 21, 1752. It is located at the Johnston Farm and Indian Agency site of the Ohio Historical Society just North of Piqua Ohio. For more information on Pickawillany and its importance to Ohio's (and perhaps the Nation's) history see this previous blog by Bill Pickard http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/2006/09/ohio-historical-society-to-resume.html

But the work doesn't stop at excavation. Some estimate that for every hour spent at the site another four hours are needed for lab work and report writing. The students are now in the lab analysing, cataloging, labeling, conserving and packaging artifacts discovered during their investigations; skills that they will use when they go on to careers in archaeology. As part of our visit we also delivered much needed cataloging supplies.

A special part of their conservation process is outlined here in their blog http://hockingcollegearchaeology.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/metal-artifact-conservation/#

Thanks to Hocking College for partnering with us on this exciting project. We look forward to seeing their results later this year!

TOP TEN REASONS WHY ARCHAEOLOGY ROCKS AT THE OHIO HISTORICAL SOCIETY: NUMBER TWO

2. Because we have a passionately dedicated staff of three curators and one curator emerita who, along with a faithful corps of volunteers, takes care of our fabulous collection of artifacts, works with our site partners to protect and interpret our sites, conducts occasional fieldwork at OHS sites around the state, and reaches out to the public with exhibits, books, newspaper articles, and lectures, but still finds time to indulge in this shameless self promotion.


And here's the link to the Number 1 Reason Why Archaeology Rocks at the Ohio Historical Society: http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/2012/02/top-ten-reasons-why-archaeology-rocks_17.html

TOP TEN REASONS WHY ARCHAEOLOGY ROCKS AT THE OHIO HISTORICAL SOCIETY: NUMBER THREE

3. Because who else is going to tell you that the Paleolithic hand axe you found in your garden with a groove that exactly fits your thumb is actually just an oddly shaped rock?





Of course, the other side of that coin is that we may be able to tell you that the oddly shaped rock you found actually is a 7,000-year-old stone axe or a mastodon tooth or a prehistoric hat.


So if you think you may have found something interesting, give us a call and we'll give you our opinion as to what you've got. And if it looks like a dinosaur egg, we'll have Bob Glotzhober, our Senior Curator of Natural History, come over and take a look at it.

Here's a link to #2:
http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/2012/02/top-ten-reasons-why-archaeology-rocks_16.html



Brad Lepper

TOP TEN REASONS WHY ARCHAEOLOGY ROCKS AT THE OHIO HISTORICAL SOCIETY: NUMBER FOUR

4. Because the United States Department of the Interior has placed four of our sites (Newark Earth-works, Fort Ancient, Seip Mound and Serpent Mound – along with the sites that make up Hopewell Culture National Historical Park) on the Tentative List for nomination to the UNESCO World Heritage List!

(Does this mean we'll soon be able to use those UN black helicopters for our archaeological surveys?)

Take a look at our nominations!
Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks:

http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5243/

Serpent Mound:

http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5248/

Here's a link to Number 3:

http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/2012/02/top-ten-reasons-why-archaeology-rocks_15.html

TOP TEN REASONS WHY ARCHAEOLOGY ROCKS AT THE OHIO HISTORICAL SOCIETY: NUMBER FIVE

5. Because Ohio’s ancient cultures, represented in our sites and collections, were just as awesome as the ancient Maya, but didn’t end their calendar in 2012 leading certain impressionable people to think the world is about to end in a cosmic apocalypse. (The lunar calendar built into Newark’s Octagon Earthworks will still be working until at least AD 4500!)

For more information about the archaeoastronomy of the Newark Earthworks, check out my review of the work of Ray Hively and Robert Horn in the Ohio Historical Society's publication Timeline:

Lepper, Bradley T.
1998 Ancient astronomers of the Ohio Valley. Timeline Volume 15, Number 1, pages 2-11.

Thanks to Ray for calculating the date at which changes in the Moon's orbit finally will bring the Octagon out of alignment.

Here's a link to #4:
http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/2012/02/top-ten-reasons-why-archaeology-rocks_14.html

Brad Lepper

TOP TEN REASONS WHY ARCHAEOLOGY ROCKS AT THE OHIO HISTORICAL SOCIETY: NUMBER SIX

6. Because David Hurst Thomas, Curator of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, says that the Ohio Historical Society has "arguably the best collection of pre-contact American Indian objects from eastern North America." And who is going to argue with David Hurst Thomas? Not us.

The Ohio Historical Society Archaeology collections include more than 1.6 million artifacts represent-ing more than 13,000 years of Ohio’s cultural history. A selection of the finest artifacts in our collection from the various ancient American Indian cultures identified in the state currently is on display in our new exhibit "Following in Ancient Footsteps."

You can view images of many of these artifacts in our online exhibit "The First Ohioans."

David’s assessment of the OHS collections is from his book, Exploring Ancient Native America: an archaeological guide, which is a terrific source of information on the most spectacular publicly accessible archaeological sites and museums around the country. Whenever I go on a trip, I pull my copy off the shelf to see what great sites I might be able to take in along the way – and to get David’s insights on those sites.

Here is a link to the online exhibit "The First Ohioans":
http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=25

And for more information about "Following in Ancient Footsteps," see the following link:
http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/portal/leo-archaeology.shtml


Here is a link to # 5:
http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/2012/02/top-ten-reasons-why-archaeology-rocks_13.html

Brad Lepper

TOP TEN REASONS WHY ARCHAEOLOGY ROCKS AT THE OHIO HISTORICAL SOCIETY: NUMBER SEVEN

7. Because, as if we could be even less like Indiana Jones, we do not have immensely dangerous ancient supernatural artifacts stored in our collections. (That we know of…)

Some might argue that we would rock even more if we had the Ark of the Covenant, for example, but it doesn't really relate to our mission and who wants the higher insurance rates to say nothing of the grief we'd get from OSHA.

Here is a link to #6:

http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/2012/02/top-ten-reasons-why-archaeology-rocks_12.html

TOP TEN REASONS WHY ARCHAEOLOGY ROCKS AT THE OHIO HISTORICAL SOCIETY: NUMBER EIGHT

8. Because while we may not have anyone on our staff as exciting as Indiana Jones, at least we don’t attract Soviet agents to the city to engage in reckless car chases though OSU’s campus.

We think Indy is great even though many archaeologists complain that his escapades make a mockery of archaeology. That's as may be, but at least he's not a mad scientist trying to take over the world. He is passionate about his work and believes that cultural treasures belong in museums. The destruction to archaeological sites, museum collection facilities, and college campuses that seems to follow inexorably in his wake certainly is regrettable, however.

Here is a link to a document purporting to be a letter rejecting Indy's application for tenure at Marshall University:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/back-from-yet-another-globetrotting-adventure-indiana-jones-checks-his-mail-and-discovers-that-his-bid-for-tenure-has-been-denied

It could be authentic. Universities hardly ever take occult knowledge and proficiency in firearms into account in their tenure decisions. And Prof. Stevens could just have been jealous of Indy's popularity among the students.

And here's the link for Number 7:
http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/2012/02/top-ten-reasons-why-archaeology-rocks_11.html

Brad Lepper

TOP TEN REASONS WHY ARCHAEOLOGY ROCKS AT THE OHIO HISTORICAL SOCIETY: NUMBER NINE

9. Because when we offer explanations for the mysteries of our ancient mounds the only people who know for sure just how wrong we may be have been dead for thousands of years.

If you've never read David Macaulay's wonderful book Motel of the Mysteries you owe it to yourself to find a copy and read it! It is a fable about how attempts to interpret traces of the past can go spectacularly wrong and it should be required reading for all archaeologists.

Joking aside, however, you shouldn't think that all claims about the past are equally likely to be wrong. I may not be able to interview people from Ohio's ancient past, but I can interrogate the physical evidence they left behind and gain real insight from it. For example, 19th century claims that Fort Ancient served as an actual fortification have been disproven by the lack of the predicted evidence for warfare at the site (no profusion of spear points or human remains with battle wounds) as well as clear evidence of the unsuitability of the site for defense (it's too big with too many gateways and the "moats" are on the inside of the walls instead of on the outside where you would expect them to be if they were built as defensive structures).

Here's the link for Number 8:
http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/2012/02/top-ten-reasons-why-archaeology-rocks_10.html

Brad Lepper

TOP TEN REASONS WHY ARCHAEOLOGY ROCKS AT THE OHIO HISTORICAL SOCIETY!

The OHS Archaeology Staff recently received a terrific tribute from David Letterman and we just had to share it.

“Dr. Lepper is the man I turn to for all my Archaeological needs. From Dinosaur eggs to prehistoric hats – Dr. Lepper and the Archaeology team at the Ohio Historical Society are awesome.”
David Letterman

In honor of David's gracious testimonial, we decided to put together our own Top Ten List!

So here are the Top Ten Reasons Why Archaeology Rocks at the Ohio Historical Society, beginning with Number 10:

10. Because at least we’re not the Michigan Historical Society’s Archaeology Department.

Sorry for the gratuitous Michigan bashing, but here in Columbus it's almost obligatory. We actually love the Historical Society of Michigan. They do great work and it’s not their fault they don’t have gigantic ancient earthworks aligned to the sun and moon or the world’s largest serpent effigy.

Here is a link to their website so you can what kinds of things they're up to:
http://www.hsmichigan.org/

As for Dave's reference to Dinosaur eggs -- we'd actually refer those questions to Bob Glotzhober, our Curator of Natural History, since archaeology is limited to a study of the ancient human past.

We'd be all over the hats, though!

Here's the link for Number 9:

http://ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/2012/02/top-ten-reasons-why-archaeology-rocks_09.html

Finding a Saber-tooth Cat in Ohio?

In his regular column for the Columbus Dispatch, on January 22nd John Switzer discussed the potential for finding a fossil of the Saber-toothed Cat in Ohio He cited this huge predator with its “canine teeth 9 inches long” as the “holy grail of all Ice Age animals. He interviewed Dale Gnidovec, curator of the OSU Orton Geological Museum, who said “I think we will eventually find the cat’s remains in Ohio.”

Almost everyone is familiar with the Saber-tooth Cat – more specifically known to science as Smilodon fatalis. The genus, Smilodon, comes from the Greek words for chisel or blade plus tooth and the species name, fatalis, from the Latin for deadly. Hence literally the scientific name means the “deadly blade tooth.” The canines are relatively thin in cross-section and serrated on the inside edge. Some paleontologists think they used these to slash at the soft under-belly of baby mammoths and mastodons – eviscerating them and then quickly getting out of the way until they died from their wounds. It does not sound like much fun for the victim!

While roughly the height and length of an African Lion, Smilodons were more massive in build and would generally outweigh a lion. There are various reports of African Lions as large as 572 to even 690 pounds – but most reliable sources for wild lions (as opposed to zoo lions) give an average of 265 to 420 pounds. The Saber-tooth cat was reported to weigh in at as much as 750 pounds – so they were really big and powerful.

Why No Ohio Finds?


But with such massive bodies and impressive looking canines – why have they not been found in Ohio? For that matter, they are actually quite rare everywhere in the fossil record. Wait! What about the LaBrea Tar Pits where they have dug up more than 2,500 individuals of these animals? That hardly sounds rare! In fact, however, when you look at the time-span of fossils in the LaBrea Tar Pits, it turns out that fossils of the Smilodon were left behind only once every 11 years. In the rest of its range, they are truly rare – with only one to a single handful of finds in most states plus a number of states like Ohio without any records.

The answer as to why Smilodon fossils are so rare is quite simple once you hear it. First, all fossils of Pleistocene mammals are quite rare compared to the number of animals that lived in any one area over the thousands of years of the Ice Age. In order to survive as fossils, they have to become buried fairly quickly – like in lake sediments or a bog, or (if you are including Siberia and Alaska) frozen sediments or actual ice. When most animals die on dry land, their flesh is consumed and the bones are scattered by both predators and scavengers. Then the sun bleaches the bones making them brittle, followed by freeze-thaw cycles that break them down further. Furthermore, what bones the scavengers don’t destroy, rodents chew on the bones to get the calcium – so very little survives for more than two or three years. Most Pleistocene fossils found today are discovered buried in muck – where they have laid protected from the elements, from scavengers and rodents. Obviously, only a small fraction of animals that died were left in such favorable conditions for preservation.

Add to the difficulty of creating a fossil in the first place is the fact that Smilodon are large predators at the very top of the food chain. There is a graphic ecological principle referred to as the pyramid of mass. You note that on the simple one shown here we display three basic levels – referred to as trophic levels. They represent the loss of energy transferred from one level to the next. There is a tremendous amount of energy loss from one level to another – typically 90% of the energy available is lost. So, it takes 10,000 pounds of plants to support 1,000 pounds of an herbivore – with 90% or 9,000 pounds worth of energy burned up in digestion, movement, growth and other processes. Then those 1,000 pounds of herbivore can support only 100 pounds of the carnivore that eats it. So to support an entire pride of saber-tooth cats it takes a lot of mastodons and mammoths. As a result, in a living system the apex predators are quite scarce. Add up the relatively low numbers of top predators with difficulty of preserving a fossil, plus the luck of finding those fossils that survive the thousands of years after extinction – and you can see that it takes a lot of luck to find the fossil remains of a 700 pound top predator.

But who knows – you could be the one to stumble upon that first record ever of a Saber-tooth cat from Ohio! (When you do – give me a call!)

Bob Glotzhober
Senior Curator, Natural History

Read John Switzer’s entire column at (http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/01/22/saber-toothed-cat-might-have-been-on-prowl-in-ice-age-ohio.html ).

2nd Annual Contemporary Gunmakers and Allied Artisans Show, Marietta, Ohio

This Saturday, February 11, 2012 at the Campus Martius Museum in Marietta

Have you ever wondered about the Kentucky flintlock long rifles used by Daniel Boone or Simon Kenton in the frontier days of the 1700’s? By studying the wonderful sets of parts that have been recovered during military archaeology projects in Ohio, what can be learned about the life and times of people who used huge flint muskets in the Ohio wilderness at places like Pickawillany, Fort Laurens, Fort Meigs and Fallen Timbers? How were they made and how were they used? Do you know that the muskets of the Revolutionary War were often nearly as long as the fellow using it was tall? Why was that? You might be surprised to learn that the phrase Kentucky Long Rifle is actually a misnomer. The rifles made famous by Boone, Kenton and thousands of other frontier folk really had very little to do with Kentucky. Flintlock long rifles actually developed from a Pennsylvania German tradition or school of gun building that had it’s beginnings in the mid-1700’s in the boroughs and townships of Lancaster and Lebanon Counties in Pennsylvania and some adjoining areas of Maryland and Virginia. From there it spread out and moved west with the frontier. This eastern tradition of long barreled, full stock gun building and its allied trades reached Ohio by the early 1800’s. Here it developed into what is referred to as the National Road Tradition. It was a distinctive school of gun making that would ultimately produce aesthetically pleasing and well designed half-stock rifles, artistically decorated and typically of a lighter caliber than their Pennsylvania counterparts.
You might also be surprised to know that there are artisans today that still produce these functional works of art much the same way their forefathers did two or more centuries ago. This is an official invitation to attend the 2nd Annual Contemporary Gunmakers and Allied Artisans Show this Saturday, February 11, 2012 at the Campus Martius Museum in downtown Marietta Ohio. The show will be from 9:30am to 4:00pm. Museum admission is $7 for adults and $4 for students. Free for OHS members and children under 5. Here is an excellent opportunity to see the rifles, powder horns and hunting pouches as re-created by modern masters in that still time honored tradition. For further information contact Bill Reynolds at the Campus Martius Museum (800-860-0145) or see the attached link describing this and other activities this year at the Campus Martius Museum.


It should be mentioned here that Mr. Larry Bryner, gun builder extraordinaire and friend of all things Marietta, was severely injured in a farming accident late last fall. Larry was one of the founding members of the Association of Ohio Long Rifle Collectors as well as a participant at last year’s event. He is an artist in the truest sense and a genuine master in the Ohio gun building tradition. Our thoughts and prayers go out to him for a speedy recovery.
Bill Pickard
Thanks to the NMLRA for the use of their calendar picture
http://campusmartiusmuseum.org/

New Ohio History Grant Fund!

Tax time is a great time to support Ohio history. We’re asking you to ask you family and friends to support Ohio history through their Ohio income tax returns. They can voluntarily donate a part of their income tax refund to OHS. We hope when you ask them, you’ll say you’re a donor, too.

The Society will use the donations to create the Ohio History Grant Fund, a competitive matching grant program for local history and historic preservation projects across the state. The History Fund will give us yet another opportunity to support excellence at our more than 860 sister organizations across Ohio—this time in the form of widely available "pass through"-type grant funding. That means more and better exhibits, better collections care, better public programs, and better preservation of Ohio’s historic built environment. More than that, however, the History Fund is yet another, very tangible way to connect Ohioans with their pasts, to understand their present and to create better futures.

To contribute to OHS for the Ohio History Grant Fund, see line #25d on your Ohio Form IT1040; line #18d on Ohio Form IT1040-EZ, or line 13d-4 of the TeleFile worksheet. Look for " NEW – Ohio Historical Society" on the forms.

A Foxy Villager

In mid to late January there were several sightings of Red Foxes on the grounds of the Ohio Historical Society, including outside the windows at the Archaeology Park/Bird Sanctuary and the Ohio Village. The greatest number of sightings seems to have been foxes going to or coming from the Ohio Village. While most staff were thrilled with these sightings, a few raised a question concerning staff and visitor safety.

Red Foxes typically weigh in at 10 to 15 pounds – about the size of a house cat. Of course, with longer legs and a thick coat of fur and long fluffy tail, they tend to look bigger, especially in winter with a prime fur coat. In more rural areas they quickly learn to stay out of sight and generally fear people. In urban areas they gradually become accustomed to some activity – especially when that activity stays behind windows or even inside of cars. Farmers often note that wild animals ignore them while on a tractor or in a truck – but take off immediately when they get off the tractor or exit the car. Foxes are most active at twilight times and during the night, but with the shortened winter days it is not uncommon to see them during daylight hours. We are also now in fox breeding season – which explains why one of the sightings near the business office this week, was of a pair headed toward the Village.

Foxes eat a wide variety of food – with lots of mice and rabbits on the list but also plant material. Given the opportunity, a bird or even garbage is not out of the question. People are definitely not on their menu. They are excellent mousers – and may help keep down the mouse population in the Village. I have seen “camp foxes” in national park campgrounds (especially further north) where they sneak around looking for handouts something like raccoons and may become quite tame. In most situations, however, they avoid people.

Since sending an e-mail to all staff sharing some insights on foxes, fox behavior, and the limited danger from foxes, I have heard from several other folks about sightings in and around urban/suburban areas of Columbus. If you see a fox – wonderful! Enjoy the experience. But never try to feed any wild animal and avoid leaving any food outside. Food left outside for pets often attracts wild animals like fox, raccoons, opossums and rats. Feeding may make them loose their natural fear of people and even become aggressive. Garbage cans need to have tight fitting lids. A few simple precautions avoid problems.

Rabies is generally quite uncommon in foxes. In the U.S., cases of rabies in “tested” wild animals showed 38% in raccoons, 28% in skunks and only 6% in foxes. Note – this was not a study of free-roaming animals – but of animals trapped because they were suspects. In the total population the percentages may be even lower. In sixty plus years of roaming woods and fields seeking out wild animals – I’ve only seen a single raccoon that acted like it might be rabid (turns out it was distemper).

As said before, most fox will avoid close contact with any person. More tame wild ones might not immediately run, but will not let you get close. In the unlikely event that you observe behavior changes which might include acting aggressive toward people, or acting lethargic, weak or sickly, give them a wide birth, and contact authorities. Otherwise, just enjoy the neat experience if you should be so lucky!

Bob Glotzhober
Senior Curator of Natural History

Photo credit: “ODNR Photo by Al Staffan, OHS Collections’

Groundhog Day Doubters Beware!

It is a proven and testable fact.

If the groundhog sees its shadow today, we will have another six weeks of winter, as opposed to the typical month and half.

Bob Glotzhober, Senior Curator, Natural History

Groundhog image from“ODNR Photo by Al Staffan, OHS Collections”

REMEMBERING ROGER KENNEDY

Roger G. Kennedy, former director of the National Park Service, former director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and all around Renaissance Man, died at the end of September last year.

I had the great pleasure of meeting Roger in 1990 when he was working on filming the first episode of Roger Kennedy's Rediscovering America for the Discovery Channel. The program was to cover the grand sweep of eastern North American prehistory, with a focus on the great mound-building civilizations and, what he would go on to refer to as, America's "Hidden Cities" (see his book with that title). Although Cahokia, the great Mississippian-era city in Illinois, qualifies as a city under almost any definition, archaeologists generally do not regard the large Hopewell earthworks as "cities." Roger, however, was expansive in his definition: "…by city we mean a place in which a large number of people gather for common purposes." Therefore, he was perfectly justified in encompassing Ohio's Fort Ancient, the Newark Earthworks, Mound City and Serpent Mound within his marvelous narrative.

In 1990, I was a relatively new curator at the Newark Earthworks State Memorial. Roger, with characteristic flair, referred to me in his book as "chatelaine" for the earthworks. (I still wish I could make that my official job title!)
Roger and his film crew interviewed me at the Munson Springs site, a Paleoindian camp site between Granville and Newark, as well as at the Newark Earthworks. We also enlisted a troop of local boy scouts and experimented with (mostly) aboriginal tools to see how long it would take to build the earthworks. (It turns out a motivated team of young men can move a lot of earth in a surprisingly short period of time!)

Roger became interested in the idea of the Great Hopewell Road, which I was then only beginning to formulate; and he decided we needed to rent a helicopter and fly the route. So he arranged for the helicopter and we did just that. It was August, so we didn't see much through the morning haze except a profusion of vegetation, but Roger became convinced that a Hopewell Road did, indeed, connect Newark and Chillicothe and even extended on to Portsmouth! I have never been willing to go that far – literally or figuratively, but I agree that if there was a Great Hopewell Road connecting Newark and Chillicothe, there should be other Hopewell roads connecting other great Hopewell earthwork sites.

There is a funny story regarding the Rediscovering America video. You may notice in the picture of Roger and me together that we have a very similar build. (I only look taller in the image because I'm standing uphill.) Anyway, Roger had gone back to Washington, while the film crew continued shooting video at several of the sites. The director decided he needed footage of Roger walking around Serpent Mound to go with the close-up footage they had shot earlier in the week. Instead of waiting, they had me come to the site, put on a wig and Roger's hat and walk around pretending to be Roger while they shot their video. So if you get a chance to see the program, the guy that appears to be Roger walking around the Serpent is actually me.

My most recent contact with Roger was nowhere near as much fun as our helicopter ride. We corresponded in March of 2010 regarding our joint involvement in another video project -- the Lost Civilizations of North America video. Roger elected not to sign the statement that several of us who were involved wrote and which I posted on this blog in December of 2010, but that didn't mean he was happy with the way his interview had been used.

I will miss Roger. And Ohio's ancient earthworks have lost a mighty champion.

Brad Lepper

Professor Moorehead's Frog

Pictured above is OHS Archaeology Collections item A67/ 24. As a type it can be placed among other large zoomorphic or animal form pipes typically referred to, at least by some astute observeres, as altar pipes. Exactly how they functioned an a particular society isn't really known. It is fashioned from fine grained sandstone and made in the unmistakable form of a Bull Frog. It was recovered from a site overlooking the Miami River near Waynesville, Ohio and acquired by Warren K. Moorehead some time in the late 1880’s – early 1890’s. Moorehead is famous (some say infamous) for the manner of his archaeological pursuits in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most notably at Fort Ancient and the Hopewell Mound Group in Ohio and at Cahokia in Illinois. His activities also took him to areas as diverse as Maine, the Arkansas River Valley and the American Southwest. He was also a prolific publisher of books and other volumes describing his fieldwork exploits as well as detailed photographs of objects and collections assembled by Moorehead and other antiquarians of his day. He went on to compile a career that was colorful to say the least. Actually Moorehead was a somewhat complicated individual who in his later life became a strong proponent of Native American rights (see the earlier blog post entitled Warren King Moorehead at Wounded Knee). A two or three sentence description here really doesn’t do him justice.

Artistically detailed zoomorphic smoking pipes have a long history in the Ohio Valley beginning with platform pipes created in the Middle Woodland or Hopewell Period of about 100 BC to AD 400. They are notable for the exquisite manner in which they were created and the fantastic variety of animals they represented. Typically the Hopewell forms were relatively small platform style effigy pipes but created in such detail that it is often times possible to identify one species from another in their renderings. Not just to distinguish a hawk from an owl but what type of hawk or what type of owl the artisan had in mind. Individual specimens or small groupings of effigy pipes have been found in Hopewell contexts in Ohio and elsewhere in the greater Mississippi Valley. There were however two rather famous great caches of effigy platform pipes recovered in the south central Scioto Valley in Ohio. The Tremper Cache of 145 pipes was recovered from the Tremper Mound located just north of Portsmouth. Of these 85 were of the effigy type while the others displayed a cylinder to vasiform or vase-like shaped smoking bowl that range from less than an inch to over four inches in height. Much of the Tremper Cache is on display at the Ohio Historical Center. There was also a cache of nearly 200 animal and human effigy pipes and other materials recovered by Squier and Davis (most notably Davis) from Mound Eight at Mound City near Chillicothe. Due in large part to a resentful break-up of their partnership these eventually ended up in the British Museum where they remain today. There is also a history of large zoomorphic pipes in the Hopewell period as demonstrated by those recovered from the Seip Mound by Henry Shetrone, but they are more the exception than the rule. These were carved from steatite or some other relatively soft stone not native to Ohio and were probably imported into the site from regions south of the Ohio River. A number of the large Seip pipes are also in display at the Ohio Historical Center.

For a number of reasons including the raw material used, the subject matter and how it is presented A 67/ 24 likely falls into a later period of around AD1000 -1600 where large zoomorphic pipes seem to be more prevalent but as an isolated find it isn’t possible to ascribe it to a particular period of Ohio pre-history. But in the tradition of the platform pipes from the Tremper Mound and Mound City and some of the later large pipes, especially those from the south , the Moorehead pipe is notable for the very true to life manner in which it was rendered. Art historians refer to this detailed and life-like quality as “verism” although this term is usually reserved for statuary from Roman and Greek antiquity. However, A67/ 24 is particularly exceptional in the details used in its presentation. Just like a living Bull Frog the front legs are bowed outward at the elbows and the front feet turned in with the toes splayed in a fan-like manner, exactly as it would be seen sitting at the edge of a pond. Even the protruding distal ends of the tibiofibula or the “heels” of the rear feet are represented with a true sense of realism. Similarly, the frog’s eyes distinctively bulge from the top of the head as typically seen on some other frog renderings in the OHS archaeology collections but here a detail as subtle as the protective nictitating membrane was thought important enough to be at least slightly indicated. Often times features like these are presented in a more generalized or abstract manner if at all. It seems evident that whoever created the Moorehead pipe was a true master who was particularly observant and almost a slave to the details of natural realism. The Moorehead Frog Pipe, item A67/ 24, is now on display in the Encountering the Sacred section of the Following In Ancient Footsteps exhibit at the Oho Historical Center.

For further reading see Exploration of the Tremper Mound by William C. Mills in Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society Quarterly, Volume XXV and Masterworks in Pipestone: Treasure from Tremper Mound by Martha Potter Otto in Timeline Magazine, October 1984.
Bill Pickard