Episode 9: The Hopewell and Their Massive Earthworks

Ancient Civilizations of North America

Dr Edwin Barnhart (2018)

Film Review

The Hopewell (100 BC – 500 AD) were artists, traders and mound builders with a strong interest in astronomy and mathematics. Arising in Ohio’s Seoto River valley, Hopewell culture spread to the entire eastern half of the of the US during the Middle Woodlands period. Numerous population clusters were connected by art, robust trade and their tradition of burying prominent people in giant earthen mounds.

The Hopewell people lived in rectangular houses with daub walls and thatch roofs. Crude domestic pottery is found in housing remains with finer, more intricately decorated pottery found in graves. Pottery appeared in southern Hopewell cultures first, possibly influenced by Poverty Point.*

Villages cooperated to build communal mounds, and some communities had 30 or more. Bodies, which show minimal evidence of violence, were buried with jewelry (necklaces, ear flares and hairpins) and religious objects made of copper, mica, obsidian and marine shells. Skillfully carved figurines reveal how Hopewell dressed and wore their hair. Platform pipes (from pipestone imported from Illinois), consisting of carved animals attached to flat tubes, are suggestive of shamanism and a ceremonial life.

Settlements were nearly always built in river valleys near important mineral deposits, such as flint, pipestone and salt. Villages seem to have moved every generation as agricultural soils became depleted. .

Numerous Hopewell communities demonstrated examples of sacred geometry commonly found in other early cultures, such as crossed circles, squaring the circle, circling the square and and linked circles and squares with the same perimeter or total area.

In addition, many Hopewell sites displaying sacred geometry  are astronomically aligned with the moon and/or sun. Sun alignments point to the sun’s location at sunrise and sunset for both summer and winter solstice. Moon alignments point to the moon maximum and minimum standstill.**

*See Poverty Point: North Americ’s 3500-Year-Old City

**A lunar standstill occurs when the moon reaches its furthest north or furthest south point during the course of a month. The coordinates at lunar standstill follow a 18.6 year cycle between 18.134° (north or south) and 28.725° (north or south).

Can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5713021/5712754