An Event-Centered Perspective on Mound 2 at the Hopewell Earthworks

ABSTRACT

This article reports on our assessment of the events that resulted in Mound 2 at the Hopewell Earthworks, with a special focus on its two caches of blue-gray chert bifaces. Our analysis begins by examining the ritual practices associated with Mound 2, including the evidence for fire ceremonialism, extended burial regimes, and the ceremonial deposition of two biface caches. Initially, we focus on evidence of Scioto Hopewell fire ceremonialism on the lower floor under Mound 2, including the significance of the basin-shaped hearth found next to the lower cache of bifaces and several features that contained puddled-clay hearth fragments. We then examine the five burials found under Hopewell Mound 2, considering their grave goods and mortuary furniture. Next, we analyze the two biface caches and their resemblance to similar deposits. We also provide a preliminary assessment of the chert sources from which these bifaces were produced based on a reflectance spectroscopic analysis of 172 bifaces. Our subsequent discussion considers the historical intersection of these three aspects of Hopewell Mound 2 (i.e., fire ceremonialism, biface caches, and burials), including how Middle Woodland ceremonial situations gathered together and arranged increasingly complex assemblages in novel ways.

KEYWORDS:

• Hopewell
• cache
• bifaces
• ceremonialism
• mortuary ritual

Acknowledgments

The reflectance spectroscopic sourcing of the blue-gray chert bifaces from Hopewell Mound 2 was funded by NSF Grant 1720376. We want to thank Edward Henry and Logan Miller for inviting us to participate in this issue. Additionally, Brian Rowe and Ryan Parish express their gratitude to the Field Museum, its staff, and its volunteers for their help with analyzing the bifaces. In addition, Brett Giles extends thanks the Ohio Historical Society, the British Museum, the Field Museum, and the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park for granting access to their collections. Moreover, Giles wants to thank Charlie Cobb, Kent Reilly, and Shawn Lambert for their unwavering academic and intellectual support, as well as his wife, Marta P. Alfonso Durruty. Parish wants to thank Robert Sharp and Terry McGuire for their help with this research. Moreover, we thank and extend our sincerest gratitude to the three anonymous reviewers, who offered many useful comments for revising our article.

Notes on the Contributors

Bretton T. Giles is an assistant research professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work at Kansas State University, who works at Fort Riley, Kansas. He earned his PhD in anthropology at Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York. His research focuses on the prehistoric peoples of the Eastern Woodlands and the Great Plains.

Brian M. Rowe is a graduate student in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee. His thesis research involves provenience analysis, via reflectance spectroscopy, of the blue-gray chert bifaces from Mound 2.

Ryan M. Parish is an associate professor of archaeology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Memphis, Memphis Tennessee. He received his PhD from the University of Memphis and his MA from Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky. His research interests include chert provenience analysis, especially in the context of hunter-gathers and chiefdom-level societies of the Eastern Woodlands.

Notes

1 Following Henry and Miller (this volume), we conceptualize institutions as “the normative behaviors that promote solidary and … participation in cooperative events.”

2 The provenience information associated with the disk cores at the Field Museum does not indicate whether specific examples derive from the upper or lower caches.

3 The Hopewell site covers 45 hectares and is one of the largest earthwork sites in Eastern North America (Greber and Ruhl 1989; Lynott 2015; Pederson Weinberger 2006; Ruby 2019).

4 Moorehead’s Mound 17 was assigned a different number by Shetrone, who suspected that it was the same as his Mound 29 (cf. Greber and Ruhl 1989; Lloyd 2002).

5 The quadriconcave copper plate from the Morton Mound F⁰11, however, seems to be missing the two central perforations that are typically present on examples from the COV.

6 The Bedford copper plate is not included in this tally because it might not have been worn in the same manner as the copper quadriconcave plates interred with burials under Hopewell Mound 2.

7 The sample used in our analysis derives from the Field Museum, but other bifaces in these assemblages are curated at the Ohio History Connection and the British Museum.

8 Unfortunately, nineteeth- and early twentieth-century archaeological excavation techniques and curation practices did not separate the bifaces found in these two caches, so it is impossible to assess the similarities and differences in their composition.