Fort Ancient
The Fort Ancient culture is a
Material evidence also suggests that the Fort Ancient peoples introduced
Name
Although the name of the culture originates from the earthworks site at
Archaeological record
Chronology
Periods | Phase | Dates |
---|---|---|
Early Fort Ancient | Croghan | 1000 to 1200 |
Middle Fort Ancient | Manion | 1200 to 1400 |
Late Fort Ancient | Gist | 1400 to 1550 |
Montour | 1550 to 1750 |
In about 1000 CE, terminal Late Woodland groups in the Middle Ohio Valley adopted maize agriculture. They settled in small, year-round, nuclear family households and settlements of up to 40-50 individuals. These scattered settlements, located along terraces that overlooked rivers and occasionally on flood plains, would be occupied only briefly before the groups would migrate elsewhere.
By 1200 CE, the small villages had grown into settlements of up to 300 people. These settlements were occupied for up to 25 years. The houses were designed as single-family dwellings during the Early and Middle Fort Ancient periods. Later, Fort Ancient buildings became more extensive and could house multiple families. Settlements were rarely more permanent than one or two generations, as inhabitants generally migrated once natural resources surrounding the village had been exhausted. Villages were arranged around an open oval central plaza, surrounded by circular and rectangular domestic structures facing this plaza.
The arrangement of buildings in Fort Ancient settlements is believed to have served as a solar calendar, marking the positions of the solstices and other significant dates.[9] The occupants also built low platform mounds for ceremonial purposes, and many villages added defensive palisades to their boundaries.[1] The plaza served as the focal point of village life, hosting communal activities such as ceremonies, games (such as the hoop and stick game Chunkey),[10] and other significant social events.
The Late Fort Ancient period from 1400 to 1750 CE was the
Increased contact with
During the Montour phase (1550 to 1700), villages were occupied year-round, although less densely in the winter than in the summer months. This may indicate that during the winter, family groups and hunting parties may have returned to the regions previously occupied by their ancestors. Such a pattern was observed during historic times, for example, among the Miami and Potawatomi.[1] Through trading activities, the Fort Ancient people gained access to European trade items such as glass, iron, brass, and copper. These materials have all been found as grave goods at sites such as Lower Shawneetown and Hardin Village. Such artifacts appeared and were used in the area before the arrival of European explorers or settlers.[11]
Although the inhabitants of Fort Ancient did not encounter
After 1525, at the
Evolution of society
Early phase (approx. 1000–1250 CE)
During this period, the Fort Ancients were several poor, sedentary societies. They lived in non-palisaded villages and had slight regional variances. The locals farmed primarily corn, beans, and sunflower—the latter being a plant first domesticated as a food source in Ohio. Most homes were what is known as a pit house, created by digging several feet into the ground and covering over the top of the resulting hole with a wooden frame roof covered in bark. Carbon dating has shown that Fort Ancient lands in West Virginia did not begin to be conquered until the middle phase.[15]
Middle phase (approx. 1250–1450 CE)
At this time, the cultures became far richer, began to expand, and began to merge into a single, continuous culture. Villages grew larger, became palisaded and pit houses began to be phased out in favor of the style of native dwelling colonial peoples would refer to as a Cabin style.[16] This was a rectangular, peak-roofed home of either an adobe-like or wooden make and covered over by the same style of roof as the pit house.[15]
Elsewhere, the far richer and larger
Late phase (approx. 1450–1750 CE)
The late phase of Fort Ancient culture was its zenith. Only one known Fort Ancient tribe has been verified by name in the historical record—the Mosopelea, presumably of southeast Ohio. There is also a chance that a Siouan people called the Keyauwee, who appear alongside the Tutelo (an Eastern Siouan tribe from West Virginia) in North Carolina around 1700 could also have been of Fort Ancient stock. During the time of the French explorers, a Ho-chunk native named Tonti told them that these people had been known as the Chonque.[20] Mosopelea language is marked as being the only known Siouan tongue to use the "f" sound, which is far more common among the Muskogean languages of the Mississippians.[16]
Despite no historical accounts of contact existing, there is a remarkable amount of European-made goods from Fort Ancient sites—including brass and steel items, as well as glassware. Fort Ancients even melted down old or broken goods and re-forged them into new items. No single gun part has yet been discovered in conjunction with a Fort Ancient site. The Fort Ancients were heavily affected by European disease, as well as the Beaver Wars period. Carbon dating seems to indicate that disease affected the Fort Ancients in waves. The most recent of all surviving sites date from Northern Kentucky alone—those from 1680 onwards. Although French explorers are known to have arrived during that time, they appear to have left no authentic accounts of contact. However, the French did note that most of both sides of the Ohio River Valley were covered in similarly styled villages in various states of destruction or abandonment.[15][21]
Four foci
The Fort Ancient culture is divided into four distinct local variations known as foci. These are the Madisonville focus, the Baum focus, the Fort focus, and the Anderson focus. Additionally, Fort Ancient culture can be subdivided into at least 8 phases that span different time periods and regions of southern Ohio and adjacent states. There was an increasing similarity between Fort Ancient phases leading up to
Social hierarchy
The rise in socio-political complexity evidenced by the building of substructure mounds and new village layouts may indicate influences from Middle
Although there seem to have been positions of leadership, the Fort Ancient culture appears to have been egalitarian. Grave goods rarely vary between individuals, which shows that social levels were weakly defined. Scholars believe that their societies were organized into groups based on kinship. If social organization was based on kinship, people likely achieved some status by virtue of personal qualities, such as generosity, charisma, and being a good hunter, as well as their deeds. People of higher status were probably leaders of communities and were potentially responsible for organizing trade, settling disputes among other members of the village, and presiding over ceremonies.[10] Evidence indicates that Fort Ancient leadership was more like that of the historic Iroquois, whose egalitarian obligations left leaders to be buried with no more than others of their age.[25]
Ceramics
Pottery making was primarily the responsibility of women using a technique known as coiling. Potters rolled clay into long, rounded strips, which they used to model the vessel, layering strips on top of each other. The items were then smoothed out internally with a potter anvil (a smooth round stone), and externally with a wooden paddle. Cord-marking and engraving were used to decorate pots in styles according to particular periods and peoples.[26]
At the time, Fort Ancient pottery was known for having thinner walls than preceding Woodland pottery. Common items include large plain cooking jars with strap or loop handles.[2] A hallmark of Fort Ancient pottery is engraved decorations on the rim and neck of the vessels, consisting of a series of interlocking lines, called Guilloché. As this design emerged with the beginning of the Fort Ancient culture in the region, scholars used it as a characteristic to identify the culture.[26]
-
A small pot with guilloché designs
-
A storage pot with an unknown animal as effigy handles
-
A large storage jar with cord-marked decorations and strap handles
Mississippian influences
During the Early Fort Ancient period, grit (crushed stone) and grog (crushed pottery) were often used as tempering agents, with ground mussel shells occasionally being used. Over time, women increasingly chose mussel shells or a mixture of mussel shells with other agents as the tempering agent. The use of ground shells as a temper is a feature often associated with Mississippian cultures, and its acceptance spread in Fort Ancient culture, moving north and east from the Ohio River and the direction of the closest Mississippian groups in the southwest.
With the change of temper, different vessel forms and decorations became more prevalent; several of them are also strongly associated with Mississippian cultures. Early Fort Ancient vessels were often jug forms with lug handles. By the Middle Fort Ancient period, bowls and plates were being produced more frequently, and artisans added strap handles.
Tools
The Fort Ancient peoples made tools from a variety of materials, including stone, bone, horn, shells and antlers. Stone tools have been found more frequently than those of other materials. The culture is known for its distinctive small triangular flint arrowheads and large triangular flint knives. Fort Ancients made hoes for farming from mussel shells. Fort Ancients had also grounded and polished stones into axes to use in felling trees. Most of the flint tools were made from varieties of locally available materials, showing the Fort Ancient peoples either felt no need for it or did not have access to exotic stone varieties through trade routes.[2]
Diet
The Fort Ancient were primarily a farming and hunting people. Their diet was mainly composed of the New World staples that are known as the
Sites
Site | Image | Description |
---|---|---|
Bentley site | A Madisonville horizon (post 1400) archaeological site overlain by an 18th-century Shawnee village located near South Portsmouth in Greenup County, Kentucky.[11] | |
Buckner site | A Middle Fort Ancient site located in Bourbon County, Kentucky on Strodes Creek. It has two large circular village areas, each surrounding its central plaza and several smaller special use areas to the north and northeast of the site.[11] | |
Buffalo Indian Village Site | A site with at least two overlapping Mid to Late Fort Ancient villages (1300 to 1600) located near Buffalo, Putnam County, West Virginia along the Kanawha River.[29] | |
Cleek–McCabe site | A Middle Fort Ancient site located near Walton in Boone County, Kentucky with several components, including two mounds and a village.[11] | |
Clover site | A Late Fort Ancient Madisonville focus site (the type site for the Clover phase 1550 to 1600) located near Lesage in Cabell County, West Virginia.[30] | |
Feurt Mounds and Village Site | A site with three burial mounds and an associated village, located in Scioto County, Ohio . It is the type site for the Feurt focus.
| |
Fort Ancient Site | The site is the largest prehistoric hilltop enclosure in the United States with walls spanning three and one-half miles (18,000 ft) in a 100-acre (0.40 km2) complex, built by the Hopewell peoples, who lived in the area from the 1st century BCE to the 6th century CE. Centuries later, during the Fort Ancient period, a village and cemetery were constructed within the embankments. When archaeologists excavated the site in the nineteenth century, they mistakenly believed that the "fort" and the village were built by the same people. It is located in Washington Township, Warren County, Ohio, along the eastern shore of the Little Miami River about seven miles (11 km) southeast of Lebanon on State Route 350.[31] | |
Fox Farm site | A Manion phase site located near Mays Lick in Mason County, Kentucky. The site consists of a large village complex on a ridge 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) south of the Licking River and 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) south of the Ohio River. The site covers 10-hectare (100,000 m2) to 16-hectare (160,000 m2) and has midden areas up to 80 centimetres (31 in) thick.[11] | |
Hardin Village site | A Montour phase site located on a terrace of the Ohio River near plaza.[32]
| |
Hobson site | Located 1.5 miles (2.4 km) below Middleport, Ohio on the north bank of the Ohio River. It has minor traces of Archaic, Woodland and Late Prehistoric artifacts. However, the largest component is a village of the Feurt Phase dating to 1100 to 1200 CE.[33] | |
Leo Petroglyph | A sandstone petroglyph containing 37 images of humans and animals as well as footprints of each, located near the small village of Leo, Ohio in Jackson County, Ohio.[34] | |
Madisonville site | A Fort Ancient Site located on the banks of the Little Miami River in Mariemont, Ohio. The site includes an effigy mound and the remains of a village. | |
Ronald Watson Gravel site | A Middle Fort Ancient Anderson focus site located near Petersburg in Boone County, Kentucky, on an inside bend of a meander of the Ohio River.[35][36] | |
Sand Ridge Site
|
A Madisonville focus site located along a prominent ridgeline to the west of the old Union Bridge along the road between Cincinnati and Batavia.[37] | |
Serpent Mound | The Fort Ancient people built the largest effigy mound in the United States according to carbon dating of charcoal found underneath the mound.[38][39] | |
State Line Site | A Middle Fort Ancient complex of sites west of Elizabethtown, Ohio on both sides of the Indiana/Ohio border,[40] composed of five contributing properties spread out across 8-acre (32,000 m2) of land. Pottery found at the site was found to use shell tempering and had other characteristics such as distinctive styles of painting and the presence of pottery modelled after owls and the human heads, traits which signify contact with Middle Mississippian cultures.[40][41][42][43] | |
Sunwatch Indian Village | A recreated Fort Ancient village located in Dayton, Ohio. Many archaeological excavations were done here at the park which has revealed much about the Fort Ancient people. | |
Thompson site | A Croghan phase site located near South Portsmouth, Kentucky in Greenup County, next to the Ohio River across from the mouth of the Scioto River.[11] | |
Turpin site | An Early Fort Ancient Madisonville focus site located near Newtown in Hamilton County, Ohio. The site includes the remains of a village and multiple burial mounds. |
Contemporaries and neighbors
To the northeast in present-day
These groups, along with others such as the Oneota, were once classified as Upper Mississippian cultures under the assumption that they were either Mississippian peoples intruding into these areas, or they were heavily influenced by the Mississippian peoples to their south and east. Today it is thought that these groups were local in situ developments of Late Woodland peoples.[47]
Located 95 kilometres (59 mi) down the Ohio River to the southwest of the westernmost Fort Ancient settlements were the
Possible symbolism
Many artifacts have been found associated with the Fort Ancients, the most common being four-handled funerary urns, salamanders and snakes.[15] Possible symbolism of the urn may be a connection to common Siouan religious beliefs. At least one artifact containing the Siouan religious symbol known as the medicine wheel (a cross inside of a circle) has been found. This stands, primarily, for the fact that all life sprung from the same place and returns to that source in the end. The four-handled urns may be to evoke that symbol, more so than having any real, practical use.
Two possibilities of the salamander motif can also be explored. One possibility is that, like in Plains Indian culture, salamanders represented boys and turtles represented girls. Mothers would have a special medicine pouch made for one or the other to represent their children and containing the umbilical cord, which they would wear so long as both still lived.[50] The other possibility comes from the Eastern Siouan's, who express a belief that "when a Salamander barks, someone will soon die."[19] As such, the salamander may have been a sort of death omen to the Fort Ancients or had something to do with the door between the living and dead worlds.
The Serpent Burial Mound was made specifically to mirror a constellation known to many Siouan peoples, known as the Snake. It is depicted as swallowing an egg whole, representing the struggle against overwhelming odds for the sake of the people. Furthermore, some Siouan peoples seem to have believed that the stars seen at night were a mirror of the spirit world itself, each one representing an ancestor at peace. Therefore, this mound may have been a special place to bury those with special honors, in order to anchor such people and their descendants to the earth. This symbolic connection to the Snake constellation suggests that this mound may have been especially significant to the Fort Ancients.[50]
References
- ^ a b c d e Carmean, Kelli (Winter 2009), Points in time: Assessing a Fort Ancient triangular projectile point typology, Southeastern Archaeology, p. 2
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- ^ Mills, Lisa (2003). Mitochondrial DNA Analysis of the Ohio Hopewell of the Hopewell Mound Group. Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University (Thesis). pp. 123–124.
- ^ Ohio History Connection. "Serpent Mound See the world's most spectacular effigy mound". Ohio History Connection. Retrieved June 20, 2018.
- ^ Lepper, Brad (April 2001). "Ohio's "Alligator"". Timeline. 18. Ohio Historical Society: 2.
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- ^ "The Builders of the Mounds". Spanish Hill. Archived from the original on February 4, 2012. Retrieved 2008-09-12.
- ^ "Ohio Archaeoloy Blog". September 12, 2007. Archived from the original on August 23, 2011. Retrieved 2008-09-11.
- ^ a b "Middle to Late Fort Ancient Society". Archived from the original on 2010-06-21. Retrieved 2011-02-23.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8131-1907-6.
- ^ a b Clark, Jerry E. "Shawnees". The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Retrieved 2011-02-23.
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- ^ a b c d Ellis, Laura Elizabeth "Investigating the Orchard Site: A Protohistoric Fort AncientSite in West Virginia" 2015
- ^ a b Owen, James & Swanton Dorsey, John R. "A Dictionary of Biloxi & Ofo" 1912
- ^ "Southeastern Prehistory: Mississippian and Late Prehistoric Period". National Park Service. Retrieved 2011-06-16.
- ^ Hale, Horatio "The Iroquois Book of Rites" 1883
- ^ a b Speck, Frank G. "Catawba Texts" 1934
- ^ Collins, Scott Preston "Saponi History"
- ^ Hale, Horatio "Tutelo Tribe & Language" 1883
- ^ Snow, Dean R. (2010). Archaeology of Native North America. Pennsylvania State University, Prentice Hall.
- ^ Munson, Cheryl Ann; McCullough, Robert G., Archaeological investigations at the Prather Site, Clark County, Indiana : 2003 Baseline Archaeological Study (PDF), retrieved 2011-02-23
- ^ "Mississippian and Late Prehistoric Period". Retrieved 2008-09-12.
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- ^ a b "Fort Ancient Web:Pottery". Archived from the original on 2010-06-21. Retrieved 2011-02-23.
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- ^ Cook, Robert A.; Fargher, Lane F. (Winter 2008), The Incorporation of Mississippian traditions into Fort Ancient Societies: A Preliminary view of the shift to shell-tempered pottery use in the Middle Ohio Valley, Southeastern Archaeology
- ^ Hoffman, Darla S. (2010). "Buffalo Archeologincal Site". West Virginia Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2011-02-24.
- ^ Maslowski, Robert F. (1991-11-16), Grumet, Robert S. (ed.), National Register of Historic Places Registration: The Clover Site (PDF), National Park Service, retrieved 2010-11-03
- ^ "Fort Ancient Earthworks". Ohio History Central:An Online Encyclopedia of Ohio History. Retrieved 2011-02-24.
- ^ Henderson, A. Gwynn (2008), "Chapter 6:Mississippi Period" (PDF), in David Pollack (ed.), The Archaeology of Kentucky:An update, Kentucky Heritage Council, pp. 830–832, archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-11-17, retrieved 2011-02-25
- ISSN 0075-6245.
- ^ "Leo Petroglyph". Ohio Historical Society. Archived from the original on 2007-07-05. Retrieved 2011-02-24.
- ^ Huebchen, Karl R. (2006), The Ronald Watson Gravel Site (15Be249): An examination of the Late Woodland/Fort Ancient transition in Boone County, Kentucky (PDF), University of Cincinnati, archived from the original on March 16, 2012
- ISBN 978-1-934492-28-4, archived from the original(PDF) on 2010-11-08
- ^ Brady-Rawlins, Kathleen. The O.C. Voss Site: Reassessing What We Know about the Fort Ancient Occupation of the Central Scioto Drainage and Its Tributaries Archived 2012-02-18 at the Wayback Machine. Diss. Ohio State University, 2007. Accessed 2010-06-17.
- ^ Jessica E. Saraceni. "Redating Serpent Mound". Archaeology. 49 (6). Retrieved 2008-09-12.
- ^ "Serpent Mound". Archived from the original on 2010-12-27. Retrieved 2008-09-12.
- ^ a b Gosman, James Howard (2007). "Patterns in Ontogeny of Human Trabecular Bone from Sunwatch Village in the Prehistoric Ohio Valley". Ohio State University. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 20, 2011. Retrieved 2010-04-14.
- ISBN 9780817315900.
- ^ Owen, Lorrie K. (1999). Dictionary of Ohio Historic Places. Vol. 1. pp. 674–675.
- ^ Brady-Rawlins, Kathleen (2007). "The O.C. Voss Site: Reassessing What We Know about the Fort Ancient Occupation of the Central Scioto Drainage and Its Tributaries". Ohio State University. p. 26. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 18, 2012. Retrieved 2010-04-12.
- ^ "Monongahela culture-AD 1050-1635". Retrieved 2010-01-14.[permanent dead link]
- ^ a b "Geophysical Methods and the Archaeology of Late Prehistoric Central Indiana". Archived from the original on 2010-05-28. Retrieved 2010-02-25.
- ^ Redmond, Brian G. "An Archaeological History of Northeast Ohio Before the Western Reserve: An Archaeological History of Northeast Ohio". Archived from the original on 2010-12-28. Retrieved 2011-02-24.
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- ^ Munson, Cheryl Ann; McCullough, Robert G. (2004-10-21). Prather Site (12-CL-4), Clark County, Indiana : The 2003 Baseline Archaeological Survey (PDF). Southeast Archaeological Conference / Midwest Archaeological Conference. St. Louis, Missouri.
- ^ Munson, Cheryl Ann; McCullough, Robert G. (August 2004). Archaeological Investigations at the Prather Site (12-CL-4), Clark County, Indiana : The 2003 Baseline Archaeological Survey (PDF).
- ^ a b Lee, Annette Sharon & Rock, Jim "Dakota/Lakota Star Map Constellation Guidebook: An Introduction to D(L)akota Star Knowledge" 2014
Bibliography
- Koch, Felix J. (1882–1933): A Visit to Fort Ancient, Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society Publications: Volume 20 [1911], pp. 248–252.
External links
- Official Fort Ancient Website
- Fort Ancient, Ancient Ohio Trail
- Earthworks Timeline, Ancient Ohio Trail
- Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks UNESCO World Heritage Nomination
- Ohio History Teachers' page on Fort Ancient
- Fort Ancient Culture
- SunWatch - a restored Fort Ancient village
- Fort Ancient Culture Archived 2010-12-27 at the Wayback Machine, Virtual First Ohioans
- S2CID 163438897.
- Phillips, Philip (1939). "Chapter 2 : The Upper Mississippi "Phase"" (PDF). Introduction to the Archaeology of the Mississippi Valley (Doctor of Philosophy thesis).