Hopewell Habitat - Archaeology Magazine Archive


Hopewell Habitat	June 11, 1997
by Jessica E. Saraceni

Recent excavations suggest the Hopewell Indians may have filled in large gullies to the level this hilltop before enclosing it with earthen walls. (Courtesy the Ohio Historical Society) [LARGER IMAGE]

Recent excavations at Fort Ancient, a Hopewell hilltop enclosure in southwestern Ohio, have revealed evidence of a small village within the site's extensive earthen embankments. Scholars had previously believed that the site, labeled a fort by early nineteenth-century archaeologists, was used only for ceremonies. The Hopewell culture flourished in the eastern half of North America from 100 B.C. to A.D. 500. Its sites typically show evidence of mound construction, a distinctive art style, burial of ornamental objects in graves and caches, and the use of fire in public rituals.

Archaeologists led by Robert Connolly, who conducted the project for the Ohio Historical Society, found post molds from several houses, broken stone tools, potsherds, and animal and plant remains indicating habitation within and outside of Fort Ancient's walls. Radiocarbon dates from charcoal indicate that the site was occupied for at least 300 years. Connolly found that the land had been systematically modified before the walls were built. "Perhaps only 50 percent of the work was aboveground," he says. "In areas where we've tested, ditches were dug and depressions and gullies were filled to enlarge and level the hilltop, shaping it for the construction of the walls." The north wall appears to have been built in three stages beginning after 90 B.C., when a clay foundation and two parallel walls of earth buttressed with limestone were erected. Two hundred years later, a layer of limestone was added to the exterior of the walls. Limestone was also used to pave walkways within the enclosure and its gateways and to cover old areas of habitation when creating new ones.

"These discoveries are changing the way we think about Ohio's earthworks," says Ohio Historical Society archaeologist Bradley Lepper. "Fort Ancient was probably not the only Hopewell earthwork to be built in this manner. Our model of how such earthworks were used is no longer valid."