Sites significant to the indigenous mound-building cultures of the Ohio River valley, known mainly through archaeology since no single continuous tradition survives to interpret them with certainty, and different scholars and descendant communities have offered differing accounts of their original purpose. Sacred sites are grouped by tradition at a fine grain here, so a heading can be narrow without that saying anything about the tradition's own reach.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingEarthworks of the middle Ohio valley: geometric enclosures, conical burial mounds and animal effigies raised by successive societies between roughly 800 BCE and 1600 CE. Ceremonial purpose is inferred from geometry, alignment and deposit, since their builders left no text. 2 Peoples and Traditions CoveredThe builders have descendants. Nations with stated ties to the Ohio-valley earthworks include the Shawnee, the Miami, the Wyandotte and the Delaware, all of whom were removed from Ohio in the nineteenth century and are based elsewhere today. 2 Origins
Whose Classification This IsAdena and Hopewell are archaeologists' labels taken from the nineteenth-century landowners on whose property the type sites stood: Thomas Worthington's estate Adena, and the Hopewell farm in Ross County. They name excavations, not peoples, and nobody ever called themselves either. 2 Learn More
Indigenous Ohio Valley sacred sites
This small group holds a sacred site of the indigenous peoples of the Ohio Valley: most notably the great earthworks and effigy mounds built by the Adena, Hopewell and later cultures, whose scale and geometry point to a developed ceremonial life.
The browser will find the site the atlas classes here. The entry describes what is known archaeologically of its ritual purpose.
All Indigenous (Ohio valley) Sites
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Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Ohio Archaeology: An Illustrated Chronicle of Ohio's Ancient American Indian Cultures
Bradley T. Lepper, Orange Frazer Press, 2005on the Ohio earthwork sequence
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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