Revealing Ritual Landscapes at Hopewell Culture National Historical Park

Summary

Hopewell Culture National Historical Park preserves six monumental mound and earthwork complexes in south-central Ohio. Archaeological attention in the 19th and 20th centuries remained narrowly focused on mounds and mortuary contexts, ignoring the vast spaces between the monuments. At the same time, agricultural plowing steadily eroded the above-grade features. Recently, the National Park Service forged an international partnership to conduct high-resolution, landscape-scale geomagnetic surveys in collaboration with the German Archaeological Institute, SENSYS GmbH, Bournemouth University, and Ohio Valley Archaeology, Inc. This poster presentation will present highlights from the nearly 500 ha surveyed, along with the results of targeted ground-truth excavations. These investigations are revealing subsurface landscapes of unexpected integrity and complexity, marked by ditched enclosures, wooden post circles, communal earth ovens, and other previously unknown ritual architecture.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22591