There is a general consensus among the North American archaeologists specializing in the Middle Woodland period (ca 100B.C. to ca A.D. 400) that the Ohio Hopewell was a rather straight forward complex of small-scaled peer polity communities based on simple gardening and extensive foraging practices and occupying dispersed habitation locales loosely clustered around major earthworks. This book challenges this general consensus by presenting a radically alternative view. It argues that the Ohio Hopewell episode can be better and more coherently characterized by treating it as a complex social system based on dual and mutually autonomous social networks of clan alliances and world renewal cults, and that this dual clan-cult social system was, in fact, the culmination of such social systems that were widely dispersed across the Eastern Woodlands. The cults were devoted to treating their deceased members and/or dependants as sacrificial offerings to enhance the sacred powers of nature and the clans were devoted to transforming their deceased into ancestors and the stresses these opposing mortuary practices generated underwrote the dynamics of the Ohio Hopewell and brought about the monumental earthworks as sacred locales of world renewal cults.
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This book radically challenges the general consensus, arguing that the social system of the Ohio Hopewell was complex, based on mutually autonomous social networks of clan and world renewal cult sodalities. Conflict between clans and cults combined to lead to a rupture in the sysytem with a rather rapid collapse of the cult centers and the almost simultaneous implosion of the dispersed clans into nucleated tribal-like settlements, terminating the Middle Woodland period of this region.
About the Author
A. Martin Byers is a research associate in the Department of Anthropology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He has authored numerous articles in scholarly journals. Byers received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in anthropology from McGill University and his Ph.D. in archaeology from the New York State University at Albany.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sacred life forces and world renewal,
By
This review is from: The Ohio Hopewell Episode (Ohio History and Culture) (Hardcover)
"Ohio has a unique prehistorywhich is written in large earthworks across its landscape. In this book Byers has presented a new interpretive reconstruction of the culture of the prehistoric Native American groups who were responsible for these monuments. Basing his interpretation on an analysis and classification of the monumental archaeological record, he presents an empirically and theoretically well-grounded and broad-based symbolic ecological reconstruction of the way of life of the responsible peoples.Byers central premise, termed the "Sacred Earth principle", hinges on the notion that the builders and users of these earthworks perceived the world as immanently sacred. From this he argues that these monuments were to serve as symbolic iconic media by which the balance of sacred life forces of the cosmos could be sustained through world renewal ritual. His central premise is grounded on his empirical analysis of the embankment earthworks. This systematic analysis of embankment earthworks occupies the first 100 pages and include Mound City, Hopeton, and Newark. There are diagrams to illustrate them. Using this as his base, Byers developes the claim that this period of monumental earthwork construction, termed the "Ohio Hopewell Episode", was the unique expression of a complex social system based on two social principles: kinship and companionship. Kinship was the basis of the egalitarian clans that occupied the land, and companionship was the basis of a system of autonomous world renewal cults. Byers claims that the cults acted to sustain the balance of sacred forces that animated the natural order. This was an ongoing task since it arose from the very practical occupation of the land, gardening, hunting, fishing and so on. All this entailed systematic polluting of the sacred natural order. The task of the cults was to renew this order. Byers then reassesses the meaning of the complex mortuary record of the Ohio Hopewell, itself displaying some of the most elaborate artifacts, facilities, and features known in North American prehistory. He related this elaborate mortuary assemblage and wealth of human remains to the task of world renewal by arguing, and empericaly grounding the claim, that by performing this elaborate mortuary ritual involving a complex series of incremental post-mortem rites, the spititual powers that animated humans and that they receive from the land through partaking in its nutritional bounty, were able to be offered back as a form of sacrificial renewal of the cosmos. This religious, symbolic, social, and ecological interpretation of one of the most facinating archaeological records of the prehistoric world of Native Americans is sure to stimulate discussion and debate" There are 50 diagrams to illustrate the book. I won't say its an easy read, but there are not a lot of books that try to get inside the minds of the ancient peoples that created all these amazing earthworks. It shouldn't be the first book you buy on the Hopewell earthworks. For an introduction try Milners "The Moundbuilders" 2004 Thames and Hudson. A. Martin Byers is a research associate in the Department of Anthropology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You will understand the Hopewell,
This review is from: The Ohio Hopewell Episode (Ohio History and Culture) (Hardcover)
I am an amateur archeologist, and I have visited Hopewell sites and read archeology in general for almost thirty years. I have waited almost twenty years for a scholarly work to explain the Hopewell. This book is it. It is breathtaking in its wide scope of knowledge both particular and general. I believe Martin Byers is right on the mark with his elucidation of the earthworks and the culture that made them. You will think as they thought. Dr. Byers has written a fascinating and painstakingly scholarly account of the culture and people. Thanks, Dr. Byers. I loved it.
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Hunter-Gatherer" societies far more complex than ever realized before.,
By
This review is from: The Ohio Hopewell Episode (Ohio History and Culture) (Hardcover)
Before this book -conversational life of a (Hopewell?)-Want to help build on the mounds today? No I think I need to harvest some sumpweed but next week I'll bring my family and I'll put up a new embankment. We'll make sure it aligns with Plaides so we can all feel the "earth energy". By the way if I go before my 40 years be sure to bury me with my "pipe collection".Hey throw in some copper earspool and some obsidian. Don't forget the mica sheets too"! blech!You'll need the glossary in the back to understand some of the terms like paradigm and about 70 or eighty other terms.Stick to this book because at times it's difficult reading and is obviously not written for a "layman"By the way i'm a "layman". You'll definitely expand your horizon not just on the Hopewell but on alot of "hunting-gathering" type cultures which are not materially wealthy but very rich,culturally,ceremonially and ritualy.Maybe they did indeed have a "fast track" to the heavens. After reading this book i wonder if maybe the predecessors of the Hopewell culture,(The Adena culture)may have been even more sophisticated than the Hopewell.This despite the fact that the Adena earthworks are not as profound as the Hopewell earthworks.I guess we'll never know and maybe as a good mystery we wouldn't want to know.Descriptions of what some Hopewell ceremonies may have encompassed will leave you astounded.Terms such as "lethal and non-lethal human sacrifice" will stick with you guaranteed!The author relies on alot of published Ph.d type periodicals for his information.Decades of study compressed into 500 pages. The author has an interesting theory about the demise of the Hopewell.From my reading he believes there may have been competition between the different cult/clans that constructed and performed the complex ceremonies at the different sites.The Hopewell sites were used by different groups at different times and the author tries to separate these time periods which extend over hundreds of years. He uses his archaeological background in a scholarly way to prove his thesis.He bases his theory about the Hopewell from a very similar society in South America called the Chiachi.The Chiachi were intact as a hunter-gatherer society when the study was done. The Chiachi lived in small clan scattered villages with a central small ceremonial center and gathered at central works at certain types of the year for World-Renewal ceremonies. I came to the conclusion that probably none of the burials at these Hopewell ceremonials were strict burials but non-lethal sacrifices as part of World-Renewal ceremonies. An intact Hopewell clan/village will probably never be found because the habitation sites of the Hopewell were the first choice agricultural lands to be occupied by Ohio immigrant farmers. Remnants of Hopewell villages would be plowed over or found in someones arrowhead collection a long time ago.Particularly interesting was evidence of the ceremonial "capping" of the Turner Earthworks by the Hopewell. Apparently it was sudden and final despite "newage" attemps to recommision some of these sites.Hopewell sites belong to the Hopewell?
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