Ohio Hopewell

Paul J. Pacheco

The 1848 publication of Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley by Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis marks not only the jumping-off point for American archaeology as an academic discipline but the beginning of our nation's fascination with the mounds and earthworks of central Ohio and the ancient Americans who built them. Today we call these ancient Americans the Ohio Hopewell. They flourished in the fertile landscape of the middle Ohio Valley at roughly the same time as the Golden Age of the Roman Empire. As the focal point of their research, Squier and Davis mapped and excavated dozens of mound and earthwork sites in south central Ohio, centering on Davis's hometown of Chillicothe, Ross County. Some of the mounds they excavated, like those at Mound City (now a National Park Service site designated Hopewell Culture National Monument at Mound City), contained impressive examples of artifact styles rich with ...

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