Seip Earthworks by Steve Beckelhimer

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The Hopewell Culture National Historical Park is an area that was inhabited by the Hopewell Culture from around 200 BC to 500 AD. These people are considered one of the “Mound Builder” cultures in the Ohio River Valley. This site, the Seip Earthworks, encloses about 121 acres and includes circular and rectangular walls with several mounds inside of varying shape and size.
Excavations of the Hopewell burial mounds shed a great deal of light into the interesting and complex lives of these stone age people. In the post-glacial period of Central Ohio, life was relatively easy for these Native Americans. With plentiful food and benign weather, historians estimate that only about two hours each day were devoted to survival tasks such as food gathering and shelter. This gave the Hopewell time to explore art, religion and other diversions that people in a more harsh environment may not be able to experience.
In the Ohio Valley, the Hopewell built earthworks with walls and trenches as well as burial mounds. These structures often had complex geometric shapes that are shared with other earthworks in sometimes distant locations. Artifacts that have been found at Hopewell earthworks in the Chillicothe area include shark teeth, Yellowstone obsidian, mica from Virginia, Lake Superior copper and sea shells. All of these indicate that the Hopewell may have had trading networks with cultures far from their region in Ohio.