Astounding Look at Life in Ancient Ohio

The “EarthWorks” museum exhibit is more than a stroll through the lost architecture of the ancient peoples of the Midwest United States from 600 BC to 1200 AD. Both the traveling museum exhibit and take-home DVD make cultural inferences from the impressive building activities of these peoples. Among the many cultural topics explored in the project are

• The mounds’ use as ancient observatories: Many of the monumental constructions served as connections between earth and heavens by marking important positions of sun, moon or stars, and thus serving as “hinges” in time in regard to seasonal changes or animal migrations.

• Adena architecture: Specific characteristics of the earliest architecture are studied – burial mounds, circular earthen walls and ditches. Later builders of the Hopewell culture made use of the same patterns and sometimes built around Adena works.

• Ceremonial gatherings: The geometric earthworks may have been used for public gatherings, including harvest feasts, weddings, funerals and judicial proceedings.

• Fire: The ancient builders used fire to incinerate ceremonial items, in burials and even in the burning down of buildings before raising earthen memorials atop the burned objects. Burning and burying were key steps for ushering something or someone into eternity.

• Gardening: A look at the plants domesticated by the Hopewell, how they were grown and how gardening may have affected the landscape.

• Hilltop locations: The “EarthWorks” project also studies the mystery of location, why certain earth structures may have been sited where they were. Hilltop locations were probably chosen for visibility as well as psychological and spiritual power and occasionally for defense.

• Pilgrimage: The project explores evidence that the earthworks sites may have been pilgrimage destinations in ancient times, with people bringing tribute objects and materials from great distances.

• Precious materials: The precious objects associated with the earthworks are made from copper, obsidian, mica, pearls, flint and sea shells. The project discusses the trade that would have brought some of these metals to the Ohio Valley from throughout North America.

• Reincarnation: Evidence suggests that the earthworks may have served as sites for ritual adoption or the spiritual reincarnation of ancestors.

• Ritual: A discussion of how religious practices generally involve an excess of  size, grandeur and detail in order to provide due attention to the sacred.

Return to main page of "EarthWorks" special report.