The Ohio Hopewell Episode: Paradigm Lost and Paradigm Gained

24. A Critique of the Civic-Ceremonial Center View of Ohio Hopewell

Name /uap04/22015_u22 04/28/04 01:57PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 557 # 21 ⫺1 0 ⫹1 557 Chapter 24 A C R I T I Q U E O F T H E C I V I C C E R E M O N I A L C E N T E R V I E W O F O H I O H O P E W E L L N’omi Greber has presented a model postulating the chronological and developmental relations linking Seip, Liberty Works, Works East, Baum, and Frankfort Works. The model sets a.d. 100 as the initial construction date of ceremonial facilities at both Seip and Liberty Works, although it claims that, prior to this period of ceremonial usage, domestic occupation occurred in the immediate areas around these sites. Following an extensive period of occupation, these two sites were abandoned and Works East, Baum, and Frankfort were constructed and occupied, possibly all contemporaneously. The chronology is based on a suite of important radiocarbon dates derived from Liberty Works and Seip, with weighted mean dates being ca. a.d. 300.1 This median date is claimed to be bracketed by a temporal spread of Ⳳ200 years (a.d. 100–500) that would allow for developmental stages (table 24.1). The chronological development of Seip is postulated by this model as an incremental series of “major construction events,” which are abbreviated as MCEs. For convenience, this will be referred to here as the Major Construction Events or MCE Model (fig. 24.1). Greber suggests that each developmental stage is roughly correlated with two generations of the occupying kinship-based community group, with a total of 12 to 13 generations, about 30-35 years per generation being Name /uap04/22015_u22 04/28/04 01:57PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 558 # 22 558 f a c t i o n a l c o m p e t i t i o n , c o n f l i c t ⫺1 0 ⫹1 assumed. This would encompass a four-hundred-year occupation span divided into seven periods. The model claims that two extended families may have initiated occupation, each estimated as having four nuclear family units and each of these assigned an average of five individuals . This means that each extended family would average about twenty individuals, making a founding population of about forty. The model postulates that rather than any major construction, the founding period produced only dispersed domestic debris and minor ritual locales, such as those associated with the residue of the buildings found in the northwest sector of the infix, including House 7, Feature 5, having the early date of a.d. 90Ⳳ85 (DAL-280) (table 24.1). Generations 1 and 2 spanned this founding occupation period and by its termination, the two original extended families had expanded to ten. Therefore, only starting with Generation 3 was each occupation period characterized by a major construction event (MCE). These are labeled as MCE I through MCE VI (fig. 24.1). MCE I of Generations 3 and 4 witnessed the first major construction, this being the Seip-Pricer Great House. The total number of burials found on and off the floor of the Seip-Pricer Mound is used to estimate the MCE I population at ten extended families, or about two hundred. Generation 5 (MCE II) abandoned the Seip-Pricer Great House and built the initial mounding by using “culturally sterile soils and a gravel cap”.2 Generations 6, 7, and possibly 8 were responsible for MCE III, which was marked by building and occupying the Seip-Conjoined Great House. This period also witnessed the completion of the Seip-Pricer Mound, indicated by the series of strata of earth matrix mixed with cultural debris and the final gravel mantle. The model also postulates that MCE III witnessed a population reduction to possibly eight extended families. This postulated reduction accounts for the smaller number of burials associated with the Seip-Conjoined Great House compared to the Seip-Pricer Great House. The abandoning of Seip-Conjoined and the building of its first-stage mantle initiated and characterized MCE IV. The model “fuses” MCE IV and MCE V by suggesting that the initial construction of the embankment earthwork started with the large and small circles, Name /uap04/22015_u22 04/28/04 01:57PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 559 # 23 a c r i...