BY MIRIAM SMITH
The Cincinnati Enquirer
WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP -- Earthen mounds at Fort Ancient State Park are evidence of the Hopewell culture that prospered between 100 B.C. and 500 A.D. in what today is Warren County.
Archaeologist Jack Blosser, site manager of Fort Ancient and co-author of a brochure on the Hopewell culture, said the Indians were hunters and gatherers who lived in small communities.
In addition to Warren County, Hopewells built mounds and earthworks elsewhere in Ohio. Fort Ancient also was a place for Hopewell religious and social events, he wrote.
At Fort Ancient, four non-burial mounds are lined up with specific openings in the earthworks and the rising sun and moon.
Scientists believe Indians developed a means of keeping track of time in order to schedule events -- something like a calendar. Archaeologists say Hopewells relied on domesticated oily and starchy seed plants such as may-grass, sunflower, goosefoot and knotweed.
After exhausting an area's resources, they would move on.
Hopewells sometimes dismembered their dead and placed them in a ceremonial structure and cremated their remains, experts say. After cremation, they placed small caps of soil over a grave. Eventually, they burned or dismantled and buried those ceremonial structures, forming burial mounds.
Mr. Blosser said Hopewells used simple digging tools -- shoulder blades of deer and elk, clamshell and stone hoes -- and carried soil in baskets to earthworks under construction.
They also participated in an elaborate trading network, Mr. Blosser said.
Scientists have found copper from Michigan's Upper Peninsula; silver from Ontario; chalcedony from North Dakota; fossil shark teeth from the Atlantic coast; conch shells from the Gulf of Mexico; alligator teeth from Louisiana; lead, quartz and mica from the southern Appalachian Mountains; grizzly bear teeth from the Rocky Mountains; and obsidian from Idaho and the Yellowstone area of Wyoming.
