Serpent Mound Lecture and Guided Hike, Saturday, June 30th 2012

Serpent Mound is one of the most recognizable prehistoric monuments in the world! It is an immense and beautifully-proportioned earthen serpent whose heavy, sinuous coils hug the ridge-top’s rolling terrain making it seem to be a living serpent uncoiling and slithering across the landscape.

For nearly all those who behold it, the effigy’s physical resemblance to a serpent and its awe-inspiring size evoke an immediate and intense mental and emotional response. Our reactions are influenced by ethnic beliefs and serpent mythologies from the four corners of the world, from the Biblical narrative of the subtle serpent of the Garden of Eden to the great feathered serpent of Mesoamerica. As a result, it is hardly surprising that the Serpent has attracted more layers of speculative interpretation than any other ancient site in North America.

Each of these interpretations has its own intrinsic interest, but the question asked in this program concerns the original, intended meaning of the Serpent. Is it possible for us to get past the modern cultural overlays to "see" the site through the eyes of its ancient Native American architects? And if it is possible, how might we go about doing it?

This Saturday, June 30th, I will present my thoughts on these questions at Serpent Mound State Memorial. The program will begin at 1:00 PM at the Serpent Mound shelter house. The event is free and open to the general public, although there is a parking fee of $7 per car.

Following the presentation, I will be leading interested folks on a hike around Serpent Mound and the remarkable landscape in which it is situated.

Join me for an exploration of this special place and a discussion of what the science of archaeology can reveal about its original purpose and meaning.

For more information, including directions to the site, check out the Arc of Appalachia's Serpent Mound website.

Brad Lepper

ARCHAEOLOGY IS MORE THAN DIGGING

Remote sensing technologies are becoming increasingly important to how we do archaeology -- and it's not hard to understand why. Being able to see what's beneath the surface of the ground without needing to dig is an archaeologist's dream!

Most of the remote sensing methods that have been discussed in this blog have been geophysical techniques, such as the detection of subtle variations in the magnetic properties of the soil.

In my June column in the Columbus Dispatch, I discuss a recent paper by archaeologists Christopher Roos of Southern Methodist University and Kevin Nolan of Ball State University, which was published in the January 2012 issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Their paper, entitled "Phosphates, plowzones, and plazas: a minimally invasive approach to settlement structure of plowed village sites,"  describes how varying levels of phosphorus in the soil can pinpoint ancient middens, distinguished by high phosphorus concentrations, and plazas, which have much lower concentrations.

As a test case, Roos and Nolan examined phosphorus levels in the soil of the Reinhardt site in Pickaway County, Ohio, a Late Prehistoric village that dates to around A.D. 1300. They were able to identify a “U-shaped ring” of high phosphorus concentrations, which corresponded to the village midden. The area enclosed by this ring had low phosphorus concentrations, which is exactly what you would expect for a plaza. Plazas were the ceremonial heart of Late Prehistoric villages and would have been kept clean for the performance of special rituals.

Roos and Nolan point out that "it is remarkable that, although Reinhardt was the locus of human activities over more than a millennium from the Middle Woodland to the Late Prehistoric Periods, and has been mechanically cultivated for more than a century, the pattern of middens surrounding the plaza space at the Late Prehistoric village occupation is still discernible in the phosphorus concentrations."

Roos and Nolan focus their discussion on the benefits of remote sensing over excavations, which they argue are becoming "increasingly unfeasible and undesirable," because they are "expensive, time-consuming, and may run counter to conservation ethics."

It's important to make clear, however, that remote sensing investigations will never be a substitute for archaeological excavations. In fact, one of the most important applications of remote sensing is to identify likely targets for focused excavation. This saves time and effort lost in fruitless digging and, as Roos and Nolan point out, reduces "the amount of destructive sampling needed to generate relevant data."

For information about how various remote sensing technologies have been used at OHS sites, check out this previous blog post': Remote sensing discoveries at OHS sites

For additional information about the Reinhardt site, this article posted on the Ohio Archaeological Council's webpages is a good place to start: Recent Research at the Reinhardt site

Brad Lepper

OHS ARCHAEOLOGY CURATOR FEATURED GUEST AT COMFEST

I was a guest speaker at the ComFest community festival in Columbus today. It was my first experience attending ComFest and it was a real pleasure. I spoke about the achievements of Ohio’s Hopewell culture to a small, but clearly interested and appreciative audience.

I was not aware, until attending the popular event that, since 1982, the ComFest logo has included a design based on a copper plate discovered at the Hopewell Mound Group. There are other motifs from ancient Ohio incorporated in this year’s logo. How many do you recognize? There is a face that the young women at the Columbus School for Girls might find familiar.

According to a note in the program guide, through this symbol, the ComFest organizers “reaffirm and emphasize our connection to the past, to Ohio, to Third World Peoples and Native American ideals, to the earth, to the struggle against those who see the world and its gifts as something having value only insofar as it can be molded into multiples of dimes.”

I’m already looking forward to participating again next year! I will hope to see you there.

Brad Lepper

The Columbus School for Girls’ Efforts to Recognize the Adena Pipe as Ohio’s State Artifact

Special thanks to Jemma Evans-Cleary and Vara Mehra, students at the Columbus School for Girls, for this terrific guest blog post!
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The fourth grade students at Columbus School for Girls have been working towards making a bill become a law in the state of Ohio. They are hoping that Ohio will vote to make the Adena Pipe the official state artifact. The students were particularly interested in the story of finding the Adena Pipe by one of Ohio’s archeologists, named William C. Mills. He found the pipe on Thomas Worthington’s property called Adena in Chillicothe. Thomas Worthington is known as the father of Ohio’s statehood. He was our sixth governor. The city of Worthington and a high school in Worthington were named after him.

Two years ago, the fourth grade classes researched Ohio’s prehistory and wrote letters to their Rep-resentatives and Senators to start the process of writing the bill. Unfortunately, it didn’t pass because of it being an election year and they were busy getting new Senators and Representatives adjusted to their jobs. Now, the current fourth graders have been busy writing letters to their Representatives and Senators. They went to the Ohio Statehouse. The students brought their testimony and presented their information to the House of Representatives’ committee. They had a hearing to defend their reasons on why the Adena Pipe should become the state artifact. Here are some of their reasons: the Adena Pipe is 100% Ohio made. It is made from Ohio’s pipestone that is only found in Ohio. The pipe represents the culture of Ohio’s prehistoric Adena people. It is publicly, not privately owned, and should be protected. The bill was named HB501 and it passed the committee.

The next steps are to bring the bill before the Ohio Senate and to the Governor for a vote. The students are very optimistic that this bill will actually become a law. The fourth graders are certainly learning first-hand the process of how a bill becomes a law.

ENJOY THE ANCIENT OHIO SUMMER EVERY SUNDAY EVENING AT THE OCTAGON EARTHWORKS IN NEWARK!

Robert L. Harness Lecture Series at Hopewell Culture National Historical Park

Hopewell Culture National Historical Park is pleased to host the 2012 summer archeological lecture series. The following is a list of speakers and titles of topics to be presented. The programs will be held at the Mound City Group Visitor Center located at 16062 St. Rt. 104 just north of Chillicothe. Each lecture will start at 7:30 P.M.

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June 21: Mountains, Mica, and Mounds: Hopewellian Ceremonialism in Western North Carolina. Alice Wright

The Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolinahave long been cited as the source of sheet mica found in Hopewell mortuary contexts. In addition, over the past 50 years, archaeologists working in and around the Southern Appalachians have identified exotic artifacts indicating that local communities participated, to varying degrees, in Hopewellinteraction and exchange. Recent excavations at the Middle Woodland period Garden Creek site (31HW8) in North Carolinahave uncovered monumental earthen enclosures and mica craft production debris that closely resemble contemporaneous sites and assemblages in the Hopewell core. In this talk, Alice P. Wright, M.A., PhD Candidate at the Universityof Michigan, will discuss these new data, and their implications for our understandings of ceremonial interaction at the Hopewell periphery.

June 28: Ohio Hopewell: Seeking the People Behind the Mysteries. N’omi Greber

Join N'omi Greber from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, for our weekly lecture series. About 2000 years ago in Southern Ohio, people with no cities or sizeable villages built enormous public monuments. They crafted intricate images of mythic heroes and creatures from other worlds but left no books to tell us their stories. They produced beautiful fabrics and costumes for pageantry; worked copper, cut mica, and chipped obsidian - all acquired from far away places. They knew the geology of their land and traced patterns in the sky. Based on the material remains left behind, what can we learn about the people? Based on examples of objects, buildings, and earthworks, suggestions of the possible role of these in the daily lives and celebrations of the peoples we call Ohio Hopewell will be presented.

July 5: Serpent's Coils and Sacred Octagons: New Geophysical Survey Data from Serpent Mound, High Bank Works, and the Frank Yost Works. Jarrod Burks

What do earthen serpents, giant octagons, and Salisbury steak all have in common? They are all folded into this presentation! Over your lifetime you have probably seen dozens of maps and photos of Serpent Mound in fourth grade and college texts, gracing the covers of coffee table books, and perhaps on T.V. shows about ancient aliens (why not!). The site needs little introduction. But a recent magnetic survey has uncovered a potential new wrinkle that we (those involved in the Serpent Mound Project) suspect will surprise you and get people thinking again about this famous old site. The High Bank Works, a unit of Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, is a massive Hopewell earthwork that, among other things, is home to Ohio's "other" large octagon. Recent magnetic surveys have discovered several unexpected features, including a possible structure in the middle of the octagon. Finally, the Frank Yost Works is likely a site you have never heard of, but should know (and it is our connection to Salisbury steak!). Located in northern Perry County, Yost is a hilltop earthwork complex that includes one of the most intact, medium-sized circular enclosures in Ohio. The only good map of the site was made in 1862 and shows a seemingly fanciful configuration of embankment walls in the midst of two more typical circular enclosures. In this case, it has been LiDAR data that thus far is proving to be the most intriguing, but we will explore some magnetic and electrical resistance data as well and see that the Salisbury brothers were on to something with their seemingly creative map of the site.

July 12, 2012: Fossil Invasion! How studying ancient species help us predict the consequences of modern invasive species. Alicia Stigall

Invasive species, such as zebra mussels and kudzu, cause billions of dollars' worth of economic damage in America each year. These species include organisms that proliferate in environments outside their ancestral range following introduction by humans.  Modern biologists and ecologists are intensively studying the impacts of the invaders on native ecosystems, but they are limited to studies of years or decades.  Species invasions, however, also happened in the geologic past due to natural causes, such as intervals of sea level rise.  Paleontologists can study these ancient invasions to learn about the longer term (thousands of years) impacts of invasive species.  In this presentation, I will analyze the impacts the invasive species have had during two different intervals in the geologic past: the Late Devonian mass extinction (~360 million years ago) and the Late Ordovician Richmondian Invasion (~450 million years ago).  During both of these intervals, the shallow seas that covered eastern North America experiences waves of interbasinal species invasions.  The Richmondian Invasion resulted in fundamental changes to ecosystem structure, which are particularly well preserved in the rocks that crop out in Southwest Ohio.  The Late Devonian invasions triggered one of the largest biodiversity crises in Earth's history, primarily by stopping the formation of new species.  The relative roles of invasive species in driving biodiversity change during these two intervals will be explained and then linked with the potential long-term impacts of modern invasive species.

July 19: Hopewell Textile Artistry and Technology. Kathryn Jakes

Textiles are an essential part of our daily lives but they are so ubiquitous and modern manufacturing has made them so inexpensive that few of us think about how they are made and where the components came from.  Textiles made by prehistoric people, however, represent significant skill and time invested in their manufacture. The differing structures of these fabrics suggest different uses; the intricate interlacings and patterns of coloration suggest aesthetic and semiotic meanings.  Although the textiles that have been recovered from Ohio Hopewell sites are fragmentary, they tell a story of extensive knowledge of the use of local plant and animal materials to produce flexible functional textiles. By replicating the Ohio Hopewell textiles we come to understand more about the skills and knowledge required.  Adding together the time and effort required in each production step leads us to an assessment of the value of those fabrics.  Study of the small fragments themselves and experimental replication leads us to a better understanding of the people of the past.

For additional information, contact the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park at at 740-774-1126.

OHIO HISTORICAL SOCIETY MUMMY TO BE STUDIED WITH HIGH TECH MEDICAL IMAGING

The Ohio Historical Society is partnering with The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center to apply the latest medical technology to uncover the story of Nesykhonsupashery, a young woman who lived and died in ancient Egypt during the reign of the Ptolemys between 300 - 200 B.C.

Advanced medical imaging may reveal how she died and will look for untold aspects of the mummy’s life, including details relating to her health, diet, and physical activities she may have engaged in on a regular basis. Ohio State’s radiologists will scan the mummy using Ohio State Medical Center’s new Flash CT scanner, the most advanced scanner available in central Ohio, capable of imaging even the tiniest anatomic detail.

The coffin was discovered by the Metropolitan Museum of Art Egyptologist Herbert E. Winlock during 1912-1913 excavations. The Egyptian government later presented it to Dr. J. Morton Howell, the first United States ambassador to Egypt and a native of Ohio, upon his retirement. Howell donated it to the Ohio Historical Society in 1926 where it has been on display ever since.

‘Nesy’, as she is affectionately called, was a "Mistress of the House" and a daughter of a guardian of the Temple of Amon at Karnak. Upon her death, she was prepared for burial and laid to rest at Deir el Bahari, the cemetery of ancient Thebes. She has become one of the Ohio Historical Society's most popular exhibits, but until now little has been known of her life beyond the bare facts inscribed upon her coffin.

It is the Ohio Historical Society's hope that this new information will transform the mummy from a curiosity to a testament to what can be learned of the life of a young woman of Egypt who lived at a time when ancient Ohioans were building the Miamisburg Mound and carving the Adena Effigy Pipe.

Special thanks go to Schoedinger Funeral and Cremation Services for providing transportation.