Hopewell tradition

Hopewell was not a single people or state but a widely dispersed set of populations connected by a common network of exchange routes, the Hopewell Interaction Sphere. Its greatest concentration was in the Scioto River and Paint Creek valleys around Chillicothe, Ohio, but related sites spread across the Eastern Woodlands, Illinois included. People lived by a mix of hunting, gathering and horticulture. Craftsmen turned copper and mica brought from hundreds of miles away, obsidian traced to the Yellowstone area, sea shells, shark teeth and grizzly bear teeth into ornaments and ritual objects, many of which were buried with the dead in the mounds.

The earthworks include geometric enclosures such as the Great Circle and the Octagon at Newark; the Octagon has been interpreted as aligned to the 18.6-year cycle of the rising and setting of the Moon. In 2023 eight of these sites in Ohio, built between about AD 1 and 400, were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks. The name comes from Mordecai Hopewell, the owner of the land in Ross County, Ohio, where Warren K. Moorehead dug into the mounds in 1891–1892.

The dates are archaeological: the English Wikipedia gives about 100 BC – AD 500, the Russian article starts the tradition around 200 BC. Around 500 the exchange network ceased, mound building stopped and the characteristic art was no longer made; climate change, the spread of the bow and the shift to farming have all been suggested as causes.