56. Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, Ohio

               Welcome back to our blog!  In this post we are visiting an ancient American Indian site in southern Ohio famous for its burial mounds.

Entrance Sign

BACKGROUND:

               Lasting from about the year 200 B.C. to A.D. 500, the ancient American Indian people known as the “Hopewell Culture” stretched over an area along the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys.  The wide influence of these people facilitated the trade of diverse goods such as copper, silver, mica, and obsidian to the Hopewell heartland in Ohio.  These goods were then buried with the dead in elaborate earthworks spread out across the major river valleys of North America.  Because the Hopewell left no written language, modern archaeologists have only the tantalizing clues left behind by the burials and apparent astronomical alignments to help them surmise the significance of the earthworks.

               When Europeans began to settle the Midwest, the settlers paid little attention to these earthworks seeing them more as obstacles to farming.  The Smithsonian Institute conducted some of its first archaeological studies focusing on these ancient earthworks, but it was not until the beginning of the 20^th century that serious study and preservation work was done.  The most promising of these earthwork sites were located in and around the town of Chillicothe in southern Ohio.  Here, five major earthworks were studied, particularly the dramatic Mound City Group.  Disaster almost befell the earthworks during World War One, when the US Army built a training camp directly over Mound City Group and it was only through direct appeals by archaeologists to the camp commandant that saved the most prominent burial mounds from destruction.  As soon as the war ended, archaeological work resumed, the earthworks at Mound City Group were restored, and in 1923 Ohio native President Warren G. Harding declared the sites around Chillicothe a National Monument under the National Park Service.

A wide view of the Mound City Group earthworks.

THE HISTORICAL PARK:

               Hopewell Culture National Historical Park is spread out over five distinct earthwork sites in and around the town of Chillicothe, Ohio.  The primary site is “Mound City Group,” just north of Chillicothe on the west bank of the Scioto River.  The visitor center is located at the entrance to Mound City Group, which was the only one of the five earthworks in the park that were restored in the early 20^th Century.  The visitor center contains a small museum with artifacts from the archaeological digs and a short film.  The other earthworks (Hopewell Mound Group, Seip, and Hopeton) are open to the public, but centuries of natural erosion and later wanton destruction by farming are now barely noticeable bumps in the terrain.  The NPS has a policy of mowing the grass at the additional works in a way that accentuates the outline of the earthworks.  The fifth earthwork, High Bank Works, is not open to the public.  Visitors may walk the grounds at the four open earthwork sites with the stipulation that the earthworks are not to be stepped on.

A view of Mound 7 and the Elliptical Mound just behind it, the two most prominent of Mound City Group's burial mounds.  It was these mounds that were saved from destruction by the Army through the efforts of archaeologists to build the camp barracks around the mounds. 

TRAVEL TIPS:

               Hopewell Culture National Historical Park is roughly an hour’s drive south from Columbus, Ohio.  The park grounds are open from dawn until dusk with the visitor center open year-round with major holiday exceptions from 8:30am to 5pm.  All of the open earthwork sites can be seen within a few hours.  There are no paved trails at the earthworks so handicapped accessibility is limited.  Passport stamps can be found at the visitor center.

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS:

Examples of artifacts found within the burial mounds on display in the visitor center.

A copper bird found within Mound 7 at Mound City Group.  The artifact is the unofficial logo of the park.

A series of topographical maps with artistic embellishments illustrating the five earthworks preserved by the park.

The wooden plugs in this photo represent where wooden stakes for a structure were placed within the Mound City Group enclosure.  It is presumed that the structure was used for ceremonies, probably related to the burials.