 The
Early Woodland period is an elaboration of
Archaic trends.
 A greatly increased use of earthen burial
mounds and pottery making make Early
Woodland sites more visible to the archaeologist
than most Archaic sites.
More intensive exploitation of diverse food
sources in highly localized environments (part
of'primary forest efficiency').
 More sedentary living, with more clearly
recognizable territorial boundaries.
 More intensive exchange of scarce materials.
 More complex social orders.
 Increasing cultivation of native and foreign
plants.
 Larger populations living in more geographically
and socially circumscribed territories.

 The
widespread appearance of pottery is
thought to be related to a "container
revolution"associated with an increased
exploitation of wild and domesticated
seed crops.
 Many native and foreign plants were
cultivated by the Early Woodland period
(with some appearing in the Middle
Archaic period).
http://www.museum.state.il.us/muslink/nat_amer/pre/htmls/woodland.html
 Indigenous
cultigens include sunflower,
Jerusalem artichoke, sumpweed, goosefoot,
knotweed, maygrass, and little barley.
 Cultivated plants remained a supplementary
food in the Eastern Woodlands until after AD
800.
 Used
flint blades,
drills, scrapers,
stone axes and
adzes, bone tools,
atlatl weights,
projectile points .
Yadkin points
http://www.cr.nps.gov/seac/outline/04%2Dwoodland/#early
Dickson
Kramer
Waubesa
http://www.uwlax.edu/mvac/_private/PointGuideOld/Points.htm#Wood
 Two
Early Woodland characteristics that
separate it from the Archaic are an
elaboration of archaeologically visible burial
customs and an intensification of local and
inter-regional exchange.


Burial of high status in earthen mounds.
High status trade goods.
http://www.uiowa.edu/~osa/learn/prehistoric/ancientmounds.htm
 Widespread
trading contacts
 Ohio pipestone from the lower Scioto Valley
to Lake Huron and the upper St Lawrence
Valley
 Copper from Lake Superior
 Sea shells from the Gulf Coast
 Intensified local and inter-regional trade
 Probably
clans and lineages controlled the
resources.
 Social standing was extremely important,
especially for burial.
 Population size and growth


villages held as many as 40 people
had very localized population density
 Settlement


pattern
Early Woodland settlement distribution resembles
the Late Archaic communities
Adena lived by basically every major Ohio River
tributary
 Religious
beliefs and rituals
 Burial mounds


death was extremely symbolic
contained tools, exotic ornaments, bracelets,
rings
 Adena

painted corpses (red ochre)
 Population
growth led to better defined and
more circumscribed local territories.
 “Stylistic boundary markers" (e.g., projectile
point and pottery styles),
 More formal exchange mechanisms that
structured the bartering of essentials and
prestigious luxuries from one area to another
in a web of reciprocal obligations and formal
gift giving.
 The
Adena complex was a mortuaryceremonial complex centered in the central
Ohio Valley that was shared by many local
cultures.
 Earlier Adena burial centers are marked by a
basically egalitarian burial program,
utilitarian grave goods, and smaller earthen
burial mounds.
Construction of the mound took place in successive
stages from about 250-150 B.C., as indicated by the
multiple burials at different levels within the
structures.
 In 1838, road engineers measured its height at 69
feet and its at the base as 295 feet.
 Originally a moat of about 40 feet in width and five
feet in depth with one causeway encircled it.

http://www.wvculture.org/sites/gravecreek.html
 Archaeological
investigations of the
surrounding area suggest that it was
constructed ca. 800 BC - AD 100.
 Built on a 100-foot-high bluff, the mound
measures 877 feet in circumference.
 It was originally more than 70 feet high.
http://www.ohiohistory.org/places/miamisbg/
 Shrum
Mound is one of the last remaining
conical burial mounds in the city of
Columbus.
 The 20-foot-high and 100-foot-diameter
mound is located in the one-acre
Campbell roadside park.
 The mound is grass-covered and steps
lead to its summit.
 It was probably constructed about 2000
years ago by the prehistoric Adena
people.
http://www.ohiohistory.org/places/shrum/
Story Mound consists of a large, rounded earthen
mound located on slightly less than an acre of
ground in Chillicothe.
 This mound stands 19.5 feet high, with a basal
diameter of 95 feet.
 Dating to ca. 800 BC-AD 100 it was excavated in
1897 by Clarence Loveberry.
 It yielded the first documented example of a
circular Adena timber building, a structural type
now known as the norm in Adena ceremonial and
domestic architecture.

http://www.ohiohistory.org/places/story/
http://www.adena.com/adena/ad/ad01.htm
 800
B.C. - A.D. 100
 This carved pipe was found
in the Adena mound in
Chillicothe.
 It shows us an Adena man
wearing typical clothing
and jewelry.
http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/archeo/cvh/maritim/v65-13.htm
http://iml.umkc.edu/art/faculty/wahlman/quizzes/NatAmNorthAmAdenaStoneTabletB.htm
http://welcome.to/Birdstone
Traits
Artifacts
Sites
 The
middle period or stage of the Woodland
tradition in eastern North America.
 Many trends that began thousands of years
earlier in the Archaic reach their climax in
the Middle Woodland in some resource rich
regions.
 an
increasing efficiency in harvesting a
wide variety of productive and nutritious
wild food resources;
 an increasing emphasis on the gathering
and gardening of seed-bearing plants;
 an intensification of food procurement;
 smaller, better defined, and more
circumscribed group territories;
 more sedentary lifeways;
 "packing"
in resource rich environments caused
by increasing population sizes, group fissioning,
and inward migration;
 a sense of corporate, or "ethnic," identity;
 increasingly conspicuous group boundary
markers to legitimize a corporate right to local
resources;
 more elaborate burial rites;
 more complex intra- and intercommunity social
arrangements; and
 increasingly formal inter-group exchange
mechanisms.
Hopewell ceremonial sites are in the Sciota Valley near
Chillicothe, Ohio.
 These religious and political centers typically contain a
burial mound and geometric earthwork complex that
covers 10 to hundreds of acres and sparse; evidence of
large resident populations is lacking. Larger mounds can
be up to 12 m high, 150 m long, and 55 m wide.
 Multiple mortuary structures under the mounds were
often log tombs that contained the remains of skeletons
that had been cremated, bundled, or interred in some
other manner.

Exotic raw materials and "art" objects, the diagnostic
artifacts of the Hopewell Interaction Sphere,
accompanied some of the burials.
 Included were:








Lake Superior copper,
galena,
obsidian from Wyoming,
Knife River flint from North Dakota,
And also pipestone, silver, meteoric iron, mica, chlorite, quartz crystal,
petrified wood, foreign nodular flints,
From the gulf and atlantic coasts: large and small marine shell, ocean
turtle shells, alligator and shark teeth, barracuda jaws
clay figurines, platform effigy pipes, and two-dimensional
representational art cut from sheets of copper or mica, among other
items.
 Sources

Lake Superior area


Kewanaw Peninsula
Isle Royale
 Essential
objects:


Beaten
Cutouts
two ways of making cold copper
Ear spools
 Artificial noses
 Beads
 Gorgets
 Panpipes
 Relief drawings
 Breastplates
 Fake deer antlers
 Coverings for wooden artifacts (e.g., covering for a
wooden representation of a hallucinogenic or poisonous
mushroom—the famous "Shaman's baton")
 Ax heads


Source:


Mica is a sometimes almost perfectly transparent
laminated mineral that can be carefully separated into
clear sheets that can then be cut into shapes:






southwest North Carolina
Serpents
Animal claws
Human heads
Human hands
Geometric forms
As many as 3,000 sheets of worked mica have been
recovered from one mound (at the original Hopewell
Site)

Source:


Technology employed:


developed pressure flaking
Artifact types:




appears to be Yellowstone, Wyoming
Knives
Projectile points
Ritual, non-utilitarian forms of the above (too big and too brittle
to have been used practically)
Ground-stone artifacts:


Probably the most famous Hopewell artifact is the platform pipe
Platform pipes depict a wide range of animals forming the
tobacco bowl—often in rather whimsical forms
Ground Stone Shaman
 Bone

artifacts:
Wolf's upper palette with upper fangs still intact (may
have been a mouth mask that was held in the teeth of
a shaman)
 Wooden

artifacts:
Preservation of wood is often poor in the Eastern
Woodlands, but luckily some of these had been
covered with thin sheets of copper


Copper acids inhibit biological activity, thus sometimes
preserving organic material adjacent to it
Copper sometimes remains long after wood has disappeared
(requiring careful excavation techniques!)
 Freshwater


mollusks:
Freshwater clamshell to make beads
Freshwater pearl for beads, etc.
 Ceramics:

Vessels:



Utilitarian
Luxury/funerary
Figurines:

Distinct from those of the Southwest and Mesoamerica
 Smaller
amounts of Hopewell Interaction
Sphere items are found in Havana graves
in Illinois and in other Hopewellian
complexes.
 Differences in regional burial practices,
ceramics, settlement pattern, and other
aspects of the archaeological record
suggest that these items and presumably
their associated ritual practices were
grafted onto local cultures.
Just what the Hopewell phenomenon represents
remains a focus of investigation.
 Some researchers view the increase in burial mound and
earthwork construction, the elaboration of burial
ceremonialism, and the presence of "powerful" exotic
substances and manufactured items as the
archaeologically visible manifestation of a climactic
expression of a cosmology whose roots extend deep into
the Archaic.
 According to this view, the spirit world had to be
propitiated to ensure an abundance of food, a
successful raid on a traditional enemy, and so on, and
these items functioned within that process of
communication.

Others regard the florescence as evidence of the emergence of
regional social ranking.


Still another interpretation considers the aspirations of "Big Men"
as responsible for moving interaction sphere items through an
extensive intertribal network.



In this view, heads of high ranking lineages legitimized their
positions in part by obtaining interaction sphere symbols of power
from other high ranking lineage heads in distant communities.
Here, a potential "Big Man" would attempt to build his own
reputation and a political blee within the segmented tribal
organization by exchanging locally available items for interaction
sphere raw materials and ritual items.
Presumably, aspects of all three interpretations were important
to varying degrees in different Middle Woodland complexes.

Enclosures:




Circular
Rectangular
Octagonal
Processionals:

Parallel connecting mounds connecting enclosures
Internal moats and borrow pits were also part
of such complexes
 Effigy Mounds:


Not to be confused with the Effigy Mound Culture of
Northeastern Iowa, which is late, but which also has
Hopewellian affiliations
 Many
mounds were burial mounds
(sometimes containing hundreds of burials)
 Some mound complexes may reflect
archaeoastronomic orientations
 Definitely not used as temple bases (such as
later Mississippian and Mesoamerican forms)
The dead were buried in many different ways,
depending upon social status. The majority of the
scientifically studied burials are cremations, only the
elites being buried intact. Both burial crypts and
charnel houses were used.
 Crypts






Large boxes constructed for the storage of the dead and their
grave goods
Simple structures sunk into the ground and covered with heavy
roofs
Often built on isolated high-spots clear of the settlement
May have served as lineage and/or clan facilities for a single
community
Generally maintenance free

Structures with thatched roofs and substantial post frames used both to shelter the dead (cremated and /or entire
corpses) and the burial activities associated with them






Bodies often subjected to considerable preparation
Elites buried in log-lined tombs within the charnel house [and were
accompanied by extremely rich grave offerings]
Once house had fulfilled its role, was burned to the ground and an
earthen mound erected over it
A single mound might be used for later burials which were
placed immediately adjacent to, or partially into, the
exisiting burial mound.
Over time a single burial mound would assume gigantic
proportions [some as large as 90-100 feet in diameter and 15
feet tall] and contain as many as 200+ burials.
May have served as lineage and /or clan facilities for a single
community.
 Serpent
Mound, Ohio
 One of the few effigy mounds in Ohio,
Serpent Mound is the largest and finest
serpent effigy in the United States.
 Nearly a quarter of a mile long, Serpent
Mound apparently represents an uncoiling
serpent. Serpent Mound lies on a plateau
overlooking the valley of Brush Creek.
 New dating suggests it was built at the
end of the Hopewell period.
The most famous of all such (effigy)
mounds is the Great Serpent Mound
in Adams County, 1,330 feet in
length along its coils and averaging
three feet in height.
http://www.ohiohistory.org/places/serpent/
 http://www.comp-
archaeology.org/USWoodlandHopewellEarthw
orks.htm
 http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/ohc/arch
aeol/p_indian/artifact/face.shtml
 http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebC
hron/NorthAmerica/Adena.html
 http://www.geocities.com/moore_brandon_
54601/EarlyWoodlandandAdena.html
 http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/ohc/arch
aeol/p_indian/tradit/adena.shtml