Adena

Category: Prehistoric tradition

Date: c. 1000 b.c.e.-200 c.e.

Location: Southern Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, western Pennsylvania

Culture affected: Hopewell

The Adena culture, which flourished between about 1000 b.c.e. and 200 c.e., was the first in a “spectacular series” of North American Early Woodland societies. With its classical heartland situated in a large area around Chillicothe, Ohio, the Adena culture was found in southern Ohio, eastern Indiana, northern Kentucky, West Virginia, and southwestern Pennsylvania. Its name is derived from Adena, the estate of an early Ohio governor that was situated near a mound on a hillside overlooking Ohio’s first capital.

Mound Builders

The early American settlers of the trans-Appalachian West were astounded at the existence of thousands of earthen “mounds” in an area stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes and from the Mississippi to the Saint Lawrence rivers. The tribes living in the region were as uninformed as to the origins of these earthworks as were the European American immigrants. Initially it was assumed that the prehistoric “mound builders” were one people. Only with the scientific exploration of these earthworks in the late nineteenth century did it become evident that there were a series of cultures represented in the construction of mounds, the earliest being the Adena. By about 500 b.c.e. they had produced the most complex and organized way of life found in the Americas north of Mexico.

Arriving in what is now the American Midwest by the start of the first millennium b.c.e., the Adenans avoided the malarial wetlands near the Great Lakes and the dense forestlands of Appalachia, preferring to settle in the open, rolling, well-drained valleys along the Ohio River and its tributaries. Here they practiced both food gathering (hunting, fishing, and harvesting fruits, berries, and herbs) and food producing (corn, squash, gourds, pumpkins, sunflowers, sumpweed, goosefoot, and, for use as a ceremonial substance, tobacco). Some mining (of gypsum) and trading (of copper, mica, and seashells) across the American heartland supplemented their economy, which was, perhaps, able to support a population density of one person per square mile.

Material Culture and Settlements

This rich and diverse economy enabled the Adenans to craft sophisticated tools and ornaments. Adenan sites have yielded such artifacts as stone and copper axes, adzes, celts, hoes, projectiles, crescents, gorgets, beads, bracelets, and carvings. Particularly remarkable are the stone tube pipes, such as one found at the Adena mound near Chillicothe, Ohio, which carries the effigy of a man wearing a set of large spool-shaped earrings and a breechcloth (decorated with the figure of a snake); he has bare feet (as if dancing), his hair is carefully braided, and his mouth is open (as if singing). Small stone blocks, deeply carved and engraved—for example with the picture of a hunting bird—have been found, perhaps having been used for printing designs on woven cloth. In addition to creating many types of woven materials, the Adenans were accomplished potters.

Adenan settlements were usually in the river valleys, near fields, gardens, and water. Both single-family units and structures capable of housing forty or more people have been found. Perhaps ten or more buildings characterize these permanent sites. The pattern of a typical Adenan house was circular in floor plan, conical in appearance. Perhaps 26 feet in diameter, the home would be sustained by six main uprights, drawing additional support from forty or fifty smaller staves around the circumference. The “roundhouse” had a hard-pounded dirt floor (with indentures for storage pits and the central hearth), with bark and thatch for a roof and walls of intertwined branches. There were also transient camps, used in hunting and trading, containing two to four dwellings.

Massive Earthworks

The Adenans are most remembered for their massive earthworks. Two major theories have been offered to explain the Adenan practice of building mounds. One, the diffusionist doctrine, suggests contact with Mexico and the dissemination of both corn cultivation and pyramid construction to the Ohio Valley at the same time. The other, the developmental theory, contends that the accumulation of surplus wealth through a successful economy enabled the Adenans to engage in gigantic public works projects. Perhaps the answer is found in a combination of both approaches. With better agricultural production, an increased population, improved social organization, and long-distance trade and communication, the Adenans had the means and the motive to engage in building monumental architecture.

Between three and five hundred Adenan mounds have been found; they vary greatly in size and purpose. Some are in ceremonial or symbolic shapes, such as the Great Serpent Mound, an effigy mound near Peebles, Ohio. More than 1,330 feet long, 15 to 20 feet in width, and averaging a height of 4 feet, it represents an outstretched serpent (with coiled tail) with head and jaws closing on another mound, variously said to be an apple or an egg. Other Adenan mounds are circular or square, perhaps enclosing sacred sites where religious rites were conducted. Common are the tomb mounds. Some of these were burial plots for single funerals, and some were for multiple funerals. Both children and leaders (chiefs, priests, great hunters, war-riors, and expedition leaders) had mound burials. Cremation and bodily burial were both practiced. From archaeological excavation it has been determined that mound construction was a community project. Initially the ground was cleared—the scrub timber being burned and the site being leveled. If entombment was planned, either graves were dug in the base or corpses were placed in a log building erected on the site. Hundreds of laborers, carrying baskets and skin aprons full of dirt, would then complete a low, rectangular ridge of dirt and begin the “inner” or “first” mound. Sticks, shells, hoes, and animal bones were used to loosen soil. Over the core mound, the outer shell was raised, often being as much as 100 feet high and covering several acres.

The fate of these brilliant prehistoric builders is disputed. Since their influence is evident in subsequent cultures in the Ohio Valley, the best guess is that they were assimilated by their successors, especially the Hopewell people, after 200 c.e.

Bibliography

Jennings, Jesse D., ed. Ancient Native Americans. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1978.

Kehoe, Alice B. North American Indians: A Comprehensive Account. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1981.

Scheele, William E. The Mound Builders. Cleveland, Ohio: World, 1960.

Waldman, Carl. Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes. New York: Facts on File, 1988.

Webb, William S., and Raymond S. Baby. The Adena People, No. 2. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1957.

Webb, William S., and Charles E. Snow. The Adena People. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1945.