Late Prehistoric Period
www.ohiohistorycentral.org
A.D. 900 to 1650
The Late Prehistoric Period refers to the time immediately before
the movement of Europeans into the Ohio country. The
American Indian cultures occupying Ohio during this period lived
in large villages often surrounded by a stockade wall. Sometimes
they built their villages on high ground overlooking a river.
Leadership may have become centralized in one or two leaders,
perhaps including a war chief.
Late Prehistoric people grew maize (or corn), beans, and squash
in their fields. They continued to hunt, fish, and gather wild plant
foods, but maize was, by far, their most important source of food.
Their ritual life was centered on the plazas at the center of their
villages and often the dead were buried in graves surrounding
the plaza. Effigy mounds represent a new development during
this period. Serpent Mound and the Alligator Mound appear to
have been shrines to important spirits that still were revered by
the tribes of the historic period.
During the Late Prehistoric Period, several distinctive cultures
arose in different parts of Ohio: the Fort Ancient culture in central
and southern Ohio, Sandusky culture in northwestern Ohio,
Whittlesey culture in northeastern Ohio, and the Monongahela
culture in eastern Ohio.
The Late Prehistoric Period also is called the Mississippian
Period. In the Mississippi Valley and in the Southeastern United
States, large cites grew up during this time. The largest was
Cahokia in Illinois.
Perhaps similar large cities would have become established in
Ohio, but the Beaver Wars and then the movement of Europeans
into the region forever changed the lives of Ohio's American
Indian peoples.
Fort Ancient Culture
A.D. 1000 to 1650
The Fort Ancient culture thrived in southern Ohio and northern
Kentucky. Villages were made up of a number of circular or
rectangular houses surrounding an open plaza. The Fort Ancient
people continued to build small burial mounds, but gradually
shifted to burials in a cemetery area with no mounds.
There is evidence that the Fort Ancient culture built Serpent
Mound in Adams County, Ohio. They also may have built the
"Alligator" Mound of Licking County, but that effigy is not likely a
sculpture of an alligator. It is more likely an effigy of a panther,
opossum, or a salamander.