The Ohio Hopewell Episode: Paradigm Lost and Paradigm Gained

16. The Vaulted Chamber Crypts of Ohio Hopewell

Name /uap04/22015_u16 04/28/04 01:54PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 370 # 1 ⫺1 0 ⫹1 370 Chapter 16 T H E V A U L T E D C H A M B E R C R Y P T S O F O H I O H O P E W E L L The Hopewell site may be the best source of data currently available to support the set of incremental rites that the Mourning/World Renewal Mortuary Model postulates. This is not to deny that Mound City, Seip, and Liberty Works are important grounds for the model. For example, Mound City Proper certainly is significant since its mortuary data, as exemplified in Mound 7, were used to demonstrate that a mourning/world renewal ritual interpretation is a more coherent account than a funerary interpretation of the Ohio Hopewell mortuary practices. However, Mound City Proper seems to mark only the endpoint of this postulated complex mortuary-mediated process. With the exception of two extended inhumations found on the external slope of the southeast embankment wall and two burials outside the northwest and southeast corners, the mortuary data of Mound City Proper cannot be used as direct evidence of the mortuary stages through which the deceased may have passed prior to being cremated and deposited.1 This situation was largely replicated at Tremper, Liberty Works, and Seip, where cremation also dominated. In contrast, extended burials constituted the majority pattern at the Hopewell site, and many deceased displayed signs that suggest an extensive period of exposure during which they could have been used to mediate the incremental series of Name /uap04/22015_u16 04/28/04 01:54PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 371 # 2 t h e v a u l t e d c h a m b e r c r y p t s 371 ⫺1 0 ⫹1 mortuary rites postulated under the Mourning/World Renewal Mortuary Model. There are also partial and full cremations, the latter making up only about 25 percent of the known burials, and even several instances of the use of curated human parts: “trophy skulls,” drilled human mandibles and maxilla, and, finally, there is even one example of a bundle burial.2 Therefore, the Hopewell site is a major source of empirical data to support the funerary→mourning→spirit-release→ world renewal process claimed and articulated by the Mourning/World Renewal Mortuary Model. If all the groups responsible for these major earthwork sites in the Chillicothe region were autonomous ecclesiastic-communal cults and operated the same type of mourning/world renewal ritual program , why would the Hopewell site seem to be the only major one to display elements of possibly the whole range of incremental mortuary rites while the former display pretty well only the end-product cremations? Lloyd (note 2) has also commented on this contrast. He recognizes three forms of apparently terminal mortuary treatment at the Hopewell site. He refers to these as extended, “charred,” and cremated inhumations. In terms similar to those that will be explored here, he suggests that these three forms are not three different terminal mortuary treatments but three steps in the total mortuary program and that this patterning was largely the result of a truncated cycle of mortuary ritual. However, he does not clarify if he means by this that, given sufficient time, all the deceased would have been put through all three steps, with cremated burial being the actual terminal step, or if, even with sufficient time, only some would have been subjected to the total cycle by ending up as cremated burials. Since he pointed out that only one of the forty-nine mortuary deposits found on the floor of Mound 23 was cremated, the rest being extended inhumations, of which 25 percent (twelve) were charred, this appears to indicate a relatively incomplete cyclic development of the ritual program held in the structure under this mound compared to the mix found under Mound 25, in which 25 percent of the 102 burials had received the full cremation Name /uap04/22015_u16 04/28/04 01:54PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 372 # 3 372 o h i o h o p e w e l l a n d w o r l d r e n e w a l ⫺1 0 ⫹1 treatment and only one of its extended inhumations displayed evidence of charring.3 If...