Economy of Hopewell

The purpose of this research is to examine the economy of the Hopewell, the name given to the culture of North American indigenous peoples that flourished particularly in the Ohio Valley but that reached beyond the Mississippi Valley of North America. The plan of the research will be to set forth the archeological context in which Hopewell culture is properly viewed and then to discuss inferences that have been made about the shape and content of the culture's economy.

Partly though not entirely because of the influence of cultural anthropology that has emerged as a critique of Eurocentrism, it has become a commonplace of contemporary archeological commentary that to dismiss as primitive the prehistoric cultures of the indigenous peoples of North America is a grave mistake. The evidence of excavated sites is very much to the contrary, that the societies exhibit complex levels of social organization. The major Hopewell period is agreed upon as lasting the second century B.C. to fourth century A.D., although there is evidence of continuity in organized social activity as far back as 1000 B.C. and as far forward as A.D. 1500.

The evidence of Hopewell culture, centered in the southern part of Ohio but ranging into Illinois, derives principally from so-called mound building or earthworks construction. The Hopewell Culture National Historic Park, located in Chillicothe, Ohio, is the site of the Mound City Group, where a large concentration of mounds is to be found (Austin 165). The

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ng the Hopewell peoples that has been found (Brown, passim; James 41) reflects a tendency toward but not arrival at sedentary existence in the Middle Woodland period. James distinguishes between migratory activity and organized agriculture: "Since few Europeans appreciated it, it is worth pointing out that, in some ways, the logistical demands [of migratory societies] were greater than those for villagers and farmers" (41). It seems worth pointing out as well that migration patterns might reflect strategic agricultural responses to seasonal differentials and social challenges of cultivation and food distribution in climate or terrain inhospitable to year-round subsistence farming, a hypothesis suggested more than demonstrated by James (42). An important inference from these elements is not so much the existence of social organization as such, for social organization occurs in nomadic and sedentary societies alike. However, migratory patterns can help explain the fairly wide geographical range of culture and would be consistent with trade-related subsistence economies, whether in respect of ceramics and sculpture or varying mound structures. Rather, as in the case of European societies that went in a linear path from foraging to fa

Category: History - E