Among the most socially and personally vocal archaeological remains on the North American continent are the massive and often complexly designed earthen architecture of Hopewellian peoples of two thousand years ago, their elaborately embellished works of art made of glistening metals and stones from faraway places, and their highly formalized mortuaries. In this book, twenty-one researchers in interwoven efforts immerse themselves and the reader in this vibrant archaeological record in order to richly reconstruct the societies, rituals, and ritual interactions of Hopewellian peoples.

By finding the faces, actions, and motivations of Hopewellian peoples as individuals who constructed knowable social roles, the authors explore, in a personalized and locally contextualized manner, the details of Hopewellian life: leadership, its sacred and secular power bases, recruitment, and formalization over time; systems of social ranking and prestige; animal-totemic clan organization, kinship structures, and sodalities; gender roles, prestige, work load, and health; community organization in its tri-scalar residential, symbolic, and demographic forms; intercommunity alliances and changes in their strategies and expanses over time; and interregional travels for power questing, pilgrimage, healing, tutelage, and acquiring ritual knowledge.

This book is useful to scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates interested in the workings and development of social complexity at local and interregional scales, recent theoretical developments in the anthropology of the topics listed above, the prehistory of eastern North America, its history of intellectual development, and Native American ritual, symbolism, and belief.

In spite of the richness of Hopewellian material culture and scientific study of the archaeological records that have come before, not much is known about the Hopwellian society Makes a systematic and scientific attempt at revealing this prehistoric society along with their social and ritual life

Inhalt
General Introduction.- The Gathering of Hopewell.- Historical Insight into the Directions and Limitations of Recent Research on Hopewell.- Social and Political Organizations of Northern Hopewellian Peoples.- Salient Issues in the Social and Political Organizations of Northern Hopewellian Peoples.- Community Organizations in the Scioto, Mann, and Havana Hopewellian Regions.- The Nature of Leadership in Ohio Hopewellian Societies.- The Question of Ranking in Havana Hopewellian Societies.- The Tripartite Ceremonial Alliance among Scioto Hopewellian Communities and the Question of Social Ranking.- Animal-Totemic Clans of Ohio Hopewellian Peoples.- Gender, Status, and Ethnicity in the Scioto, Miami, and Northeastern Ohio Hopewellian Regions, as Evidenced by Mortuary Practices.- Gender and Social Differentiation within the Turner Population, Ohio, as Evidenced by Activity-Induced Musculoskeletal Stress Markers.- Gender, Role, Prestige, and Ritual Interaction across the Ohio, Mann, and Havana Hopewellian Regions, as Evidenced by Ceramic Figurines.- Ritual Gatherings of Northern Hopewellian Peoples.- Scioto Hopewell Ritual Gatherings.- Estimating the Sizes and Social Compositions of Mortuary-Related Gatherings at Scioto Hopewell Earthwork-Mound Sites.- Smoking Pipe Compositions and Styles as Evidence of the Social Affiliations of Mortuary Ritual Participants at the Tremper Site, Ohio.- Ceramic Vessel Compositions and Styles as Evidence of the Local and Nonlocal Social Affiliations of Ritual Participants at the Mann Site, Indiana.- Hopewellian Ritual Connections across Eastern North America.- Rethinking Interregional Hopewellian Interaction.- Hopewellian Copper Celts from Eastern North America.- Hopewellian Panpipes from Eastern North America.- Hopewellian Copper Earspoolsfrom Eastern North America.- Hopewellian Silver and Silver Artifacts from Eastern North America.