We have bumped up the release of this particular book in order to make it available as a reference resource  for the upcoming "Hopewell: Their Origins, Artistry and Culture" symposium being presented by the Archaeological Society of Ohio, May 19-20, 2006 in Columbus, Ohio. If you are interested in the Hopewell culture you should check into attending this second annual symposium.

This book was published in 1922 by the Field Museum of Natural History of Chicago as Publication 211, Anthropological Series, Volume VI, No. 5.  In it, Moorehead expanded on the excavations of this very important Hopewell site that readers were previously introduced to in Primitive Man in Ohio (another of our vintage reprints - please click here).

The artistry of the artifacts displayed by this prehistoric culture is mind boggling as a glance at the artifacts pictured in the 64 in-text illustrations or the 48 full-page plates will attest.     

This site was extremely rich in artifacts of copper, mica, stone and (my favorite) items of meteoric iron.  I can understand the working of copper with ancient tools, but iron is a pretty hard material.  One shell bead was found with a small piece of meteoric iron, which had been used as a drill bit, still in the hole. 

"Meteoric iron is malleable, but not so easily worked as copper. The natives must have reduced it to the desired form by hammering and grinding. There are in the Hopewell collection thirty or forty fragments of meteors and iron artifacts.  These include fragments of plates, hatchets, cones, beads, and small chisel-like objects about 10 cm in length. While searching the ashes and debris from Altar 1, Willoughby found a shell bead in the perforation of which was a slender meteoric iron drill, broken, but identifiable."

As to the importance of this site, in Moorehead's own words: “Notwithstanding the fact that ceramic art was more highly developed in the south, it is safe to assume that in copper, quartz crystal, bone and pipe effigies the Hopewell people were not surpassed and seldom equaled by any other tribe of Indians, either ancient or modern, within the area embraced by the United States.....It is my belief that Hopewell itself was the metropolis of this ancient people, where resided the chief traders or merchants, as well as the most skilled artisans.”