Time Periods
In order to give you a more accurate depiction I have to provide a time line for you. So let's begin by discussing the Woodland Period. The period can be divided into 3 different time frames.There is evidence that some groups of Archaic people lived in Ohio at least until 1000 to 500 B.C. A new culture was evolving in the centuries just before the recorded birth of Christ and this is what archaeoligists refer to as the Woodland Period.
The differences between Archaic and Woodland cultures seemed to be very different and apparent. The people of the Woodland period grew more plant food, lived in permanent villages, made pottery, and emphasized ceremony and art. These differences seemedto be so great that in the past it was believed that the Woodland people must have moved into Ohio from places as far away as Mexico. More recenly, research, has suggested that in much of the Ohio Valley, there was not a sudden change, but rather a an evolvement type of shift from Archaic to Woodland lifestyles.
Archaeologists have divided the Woodland cultures into three periods, Early, Middle, and Late. Within these segments, groups have been distinguished from each other due to differences in the tools they made.
There was no documentation on these people and even though we call these indians the Adena, the Hopewell-the names are from sites where they lived or worked. The Adena indians were named for charles Adena Worthington who owned the estate where the culture was discovered. It is not known what these people were really called!
Enter the Adena! Early Woodland
800 B.C. to A.D. 1
The Adena culture refers to the prehistoric American Indian peoples that lived in southern Ohio and neighboring regions of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Indiana during the Early Woodland Period. They were the first people in this region to settle down in small villages, cultivate crops, use pottery vessels, acquire exotic raw materials, such as copper and marine shell, to make ornaments and jewelry, and bury their honored dead in conical burial mounds.
The Hopewell Middle Woodland
100 B.C. to A.D. 500
The Hopewell culture is an ancient American Indian civilization that arose in Ohio and other parts of eastern North America during the Middle Woodland Period, perhaps as early as 100 BC.
It is characterized by gigantic mounds and earthen enclosures in a variety of shapes, magnificent works of art crafted from raw materials brought to Ohio from great distances, and particular styles of stone tools and pottery unique to this time and region.
The Hopewell culture developed from the precedent Adena culture, but the Hopewell culture built much larger earthworks and greatly expanded the area from which it obtained exotic raw materials, such as shells from the Gulf of Mexico, copper from the Great Lakes region, mica from the Carolinas, and obsidian from the Rocky Mountains. The archaeologist N'omi Greber refers to the rise of the Hopewell culture as an "explosion" of art, ritual, and ceremonial architecture.
Late Woodland-* Fort Ancient Culture
Between A.D. 400 and 600, the Hopewell culture seems to have changed a great deal. Archaeologists recognize several Late Woodland societies in Ohio. The Newtown group lived in southwestern and central Ohio from A.D. 400 to about 900. The people who made Peters Cord-marked pottery were in southeastern Ohio about the same time. The Cole and Cole/Baldwin groups occupied the Delaware and Muskingum County areas after A.D. 1000. Western Basin Late Woodland groups lived along the western edge of Lake Erie throughout this period; however, they had more in common with groups in Michigan than in southern Ohio.
A.D. 1000 to 1650 The Fort Ancient culture thrived in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky. Villages were made up of a number of circular or rectangular houses surrounding an open plaza. The Fort Ancient people continued to build small burial mounds, but gradually shifted to burials in a cemetery area with no mounds.
There is evidence that the Fort Ancient culture built Serpent Mound in Ohio. They also may have built the "Alligator" Mound also, but that effigy is not likely a sculpture of an alligator. It is more likely an effigy of a panther, opossum, or a salamander, or even a bear!
