Primer of Ohio Archaeology: The Mound Builders and the Indians

Long before Columbus sailed, Ohio's river valleys teemed with a civilization that raised massive earthworks in geometric precision, intricate serpentine effigies, and elaborate burial mounds filled with copper panpipes, mica mirrors, and shells from distant shores. The Mound Builders were never a single people but a succession of sophisticated cultures, the Adena, the Hopewell, and their successors, whose geometric enclosures and artistic achievements rivals anything in the ancient world. Shetrone, one of the pioneering archaeologists who excavated these sites before modern preservation laws, guides readers through what was known in the mid-twentieth century about these vanished societies and the Native peoples who inherited the lands after them. This book captures a particular moment in American archaeology, when the earthworks were still being systematically looted, when radiocarbon dating was brand new, and when scholars were first grappling with the identities of the mound builders. It remains essential reading for anyone seeking to understand not only Ohio's deep past but the origins of American archaeology itself.