Copper head and breast plates   Save
Archaeology Collection - Ohio History Connection
Description: Head and breast plates made of copper by the Ohio Hopewell group, 100 BC-500 AD. Excavated from the Hopewell Mound Group in Ross County, 1925. These objects are held in the Ohio History Connection Archaeology Collection. The Hopewell Mound Group, the type site for the Hopewell Culture, is located along the North Fork of Paint Creek in Union Township, Ross County, Ohio. When first surveyed in the mid-1800s the mound and earthwork complex, once referred to as the Clark Works, contained at least 38 mounds of various sizes within a 111-acre, somewhat “D”-shaped walled enclosure. An attached segmented square enclosed an additional 18 acres. The most notable mound in the group is referred to as Mound 25, a three-part conjoined mound that once measured 35 feet high by 500 feet long and 180 feet wide at the base. It was this mound more than any other that was the source of many of the iconic artifacts that defined the Hopewell Culture (100 BC-AD 400). The Hopewell Mound Group was extensively investigated in the early 1890s by Warren Moorehead to collect material for the 1892 World’s Columbian Exposition. This material is now housed in the Chicago Field Museum. In the 1920s Henry Shetrone of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society (now the Ohio History Connection) also did extensive field work there, assembling an impressive collection of materials for the museum. Today the Hopewell Mound Group and several other related Ross County earthwork complexes are overseen by the National Park Service as the Hopewell Culture National Historic Park. The Hopewell Mound Group is one of seven Ohio Hopewell Ceremonial Earthwork sites presently under consideration by the United States Department of the Interior for nomination as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: AL00272
Subjects: Ross County (Ohio); Ohio History--Natural and Native Ohio; American Indians--Archaeology; Hopewell Culture (A.D. 1–400); Artifacts
Places: Ross County (Ohio)