Archaeology: Theory Looks at How Ancient Goods Got to Ohio

The Hopewell Interaction Sphere.
Image Courtesy of Voyageur Media Group
and the Ohio History Connection Archaeology Blog.

February, 15, 2015.

Brad Lepper, of the Ohio History Connection Archaeology Blog, has written a blog post and an article in The Columbus Dispatch about new details in how Ohio's Hopewell Culture, 100 B.C - A.D. 400, received their exotic material artifacts.

"We call it an Interaction Sphere, because we don’t know for sure what’s behind all the interaction and we don’t want to presume the answer to our question by calling it, for example, a trade network – although trade most certainly was at least one part of what was going on. Interaction Sphere is a convenient and descriptive yet neutral term to apply to the widespread movement of ideas and materials that is so characteristic of the Middle Woodland period in Ohio and other regions in eastern North America."

-Brad Lepper, Ohio History Connection Archaeology Blog.

To read the full post, click here.

"Those exotic materials include Canadian copper, Gulf Coast sea shells, Wyoming obsidian and North Carolina mica. Figuring out how and why this eye-catching stuff made its way to Ohio is among the most fascinating questions in American archaeology."

-Brad Lepper, The Columbus Dispatch.

To read the full article, click here.

For more information,

Visit:

• Earthworks Timeline
• Ancient Ohio Trail
• The Hopewell Culture
• Virtual First Ohioans
• Garden Creek Archaeological Project Blog
• Hopewell Moon
• January, 8, 2015
• "Interaction spheres in prehistory". In Hopewell Studies, edited by J. R. Caldwell and Robert Hall, pp. 135-143. Scientific Papers No. 12, Illinois State Museum, Springfield.
• Joseph R. Caldwell, 1964.
• "The Great Hopewell Road and the Role of pilgrimage in the Hopewell Interaction Sphere" In Recreating Hopewell, edited by D. K. Charles and J. E. Buikstra, pp. 122-133. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
• Bradley T. Lepper, 2006.
• "The ceremonial landscape of the Newark Earthworks and the Raccoon Creek Valley" In Hopewell Settlement Patterns, Subsistence, and Symbolic Landscapes*, University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
• edited by Martin Byers and DeeAnne Wymer, pg 97-127, 2010.
• Project MUSE
• "Ritualized craft production at the Hopewell periphery: new evidence from the Appalachian Summit"
• Alice P. Wright and Erika Loveland, Antiquity, Vol 89 Issue 343, February 2015.

*Link provided requires a sign in to Project Muse. 

Ohio State University students can use their student log-in to access the database

through the university's library page, here.