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Undocumented Artifacts from the First Ohioans Exhibit
Description: This vessel is a plaster cast of a highly-decorated pot excavated at Mound City, now Hopewell Culture National Park, near Chillicothe in Ross County, Ohio. It is squarish in shape with a straight rim. The upper part of the rim is decorated with fine indentations bordered by a row of triangular punctates (indentations). The neck of the pot is plain, while the body has four sides, each featuring an incised, abstract bird design, possibly a duck. Around each of the figures are fine indentations made with a comb-like tool. At each corner of the pot there is a vertical row of triangular punctates, extending to the four small feet on which the pot stands. This piece is from Hopewell Culture. In Ohio, the Hopewell Indians (100 B.C.-A.D. 500) built burial mounds and large earthen enclosures in geometric shapes (circles, squares, and octagons) to mark the places where the people gathered periodically to participate in many social and ceremonial events. Some of these sites were quite large - the Newark Earthworks complex extends over a 4-square-mile area. The Hopewell people also maintained a large trade network extending as far as the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, the Florida coast and Appalachians, and northern Lake Superior. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: A4786_000090
Subjects: Hopewell Culture (A.D. 1–400); Mound-builders; Pottery, Prehistoric;
Places: Undocumented Artifacts from the First Ohioans Exhibit