Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/168

 156 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. s., 22, 1920

sitic traits that it was late in the past century before the less im- posing culture groups were even accorded recognition. While but few traits can be said to be unique to any given group of Ohio aborigines, the following may be taken as characteristic of and as nearly as possible peculiar to, the Hopewell culture :

Extensive complex earthworks of geometric forms; mounds usually low, irregularly shaped structures, often within or adjacent to the typical earthworks; burial tumuli usually cover the sites or remains of structures, varying from unpretentious enclosures of upright timbers or posts to similarly constructed buildings of large size, serving as sacred places into which the dead were taken for funeral obsequies and sepulture; cremation of the dead and dis- position of their ashes in prepared graves of puddled clay the rule, though not to the exclusion of uncremated burial; sculptural art highly developed, particularly in the carving of life forms in stone; comparatively high development of the textile and fictile arts, as evidenced in woven cloth and fabric and in burned clay pottery ware; strikingly free use of copper, both for ornament and utility; and the extensive possession and use of materials from distant sources of supply, as mica, obsidian, quartz crystal, and galena.

Dr. Clark Wissler, in his classification of archaeological areas 1 is inclined to accord the Hopewell culture a place marginal to the culture complex centering in Tennessee. This classification, as before noted, is one of areas rather than of cultures, and in its broadness of scope does not permit of the close analysis to be had in a local handling of the subject. Nevertheless, since it makes specific mention of the Hopewell group and tentatively correlates it with a definite culture center outside the assumed area, it very properly may be considered as pertinent to the present subject of discussion. From the local viewpoint, and in the light of recent explorations, the Hopewell .group would appear to merit a more prominent position than that accorded it in the general continental classification above referred to. Comparison of the distinctive traits of the Hopewell with those of the culture centering in Ten- nessee, or with any other archaeological culture complex, will

1 Wissler: p. 252.

�� �