Mysteries of the Hopewell: Astronomers, Geometers, and Magicians of the Eastern Woodlands. (Book Review).
Tankersley, Kenneth B.
Mysteries of the Hopewell: Astronomers, Geometers, and Magicians of
the Eastern Woodlands. William F. Romain. 2000. The University of Akron
Press, Akron, OH. 272 p. $44.95 hardcover.
This well-written book compares the spatial and physical parameters
of archaeological surface features, known as earthworks, to specific
alignments of the rising and setting sun and moon. Some of these
features appear on the landscape as geometric designs, and others are in
the shape of animals, many of which are more than a thousand feet
across. This book attempts to answer the questions of why were they
built, and who built them?
Romain suggests that most of the earthworks were constructed by the
Hopewell, an ancient American Indian culture whose actual name remains
unknown, a group of people who spoke the same language, had the same
economy, the same social organization, the same ideology, and the same
symbol systems. Most specialists assume that Hopewell can be
archaeologically recognized by temporal and spatial homogeneity in
material culture. Geographically, the term Hopewell has been used to
describe artifacts and archaeological sites from the Atlantic Ocean to
the Rocky Mountains, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. This
book, however, is limited to the state of Ohio.
Romain goes into great detail documenting similarities in the use
of Hopewell space, but his temporal parameters are "presumed."
He assumes that all of the earthworks described and illustrated were
constructed between 500 BC and AD 500, and "over the course of
1,000 years, the sun's (and moon's) rising and setting
positions on the horizon change by less than two tenths of one
degree" (p 106). But, what about culture change over a millennium?
Romain assumes cultural continuity over a period of 1,000 years, that
is, almost five times longer than the United States has been a country.
Although the complete absence of geochronology, radiocarbon dates, or
their contexts is troubling, this problem is not unique to Romain's
book; rather, it is a sticky situation that has all but stifled
archaeological studies in Ohio Hopewell (Greber and Ruhl 2001).
"How old is it?" is the single most important question in
archaeology. If we do not know the answer to this simple question, then
everything we say about the past is going to be based on pure
speculation. For more than fifty years, radiocarbon dating has provided
North American archaeologists with a powerful measure of time. Some Ohio
Hopewell specialists have justified their use of artifact styles and
earthwork forms to infer time, rather than employ chronometric dates,
because radiocarbon years are not equal to calendar years. Indeed, the
production of radiocarbon in the atmosphere through time has not been
constant, making radiocarbon time older or younger than sidereal time.
However, other chronometric dating techniques can be used to calibrate radiocarbon dates to read as calendar years. For example, 500 BC in
radiocarbon years is actually 610 BC in sidereal time, and AD 500 in
radiocarbon years is actually AD 350.
For the past 200 years, interpretations of Ohio earthworks have,
more often than not, gone beyond the confines of epistemology--the very
nature of human knowledge, its limits and validity. In addition to
attributing earthwork geometry and orientation to ancient astronomies,
they have been credited to lost civilizations and even ancient
astronauts. At best, such explanations are ethnocentrically biased,
nationalistic, and pseudoscience.
Today, most scientists agree that truth is the ultimate goal of
their research. As a science, modern archaeology seeks truth through the
rigors of the scientific method. As scientists, archaeologists can never
prove their interpretations of the past; rather, they disprove what is
not true. If archaeologists confuse potentiality and possibility with
the truth, then they create unrealistic expectations of the record, and
mental closure to alternative explanations.
I have no doubt that Ohio's earthworks were built by people
that were avid astronomers, geometers, and magicians. If the readers
apply, as I did, Romain's solar and lunar azimuths to the locations
of windows, doorways, and rooms in their homes, they may be surprised to
find alignments with the winter and summer solstice sunrises and
sunsets, and the maximum and minimum moonrises and moonsets. How then
can we objectively prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that an ancient
Ohio earthwork, more than a thousand years old, was intentionally built
in alignment with a significant astronomical event?
This book also surprised me with the description and illustration
of different types of "mountains" in Ohio (p 188). It might be
said that Romain's Mysteries of the Hopewell has made mountains out
of Ohio's mounds.
LITERATURE CITED
Greber NB, Ruhl KC. 2001. The Hopewell site: A contemporary
analysis based on the work of Charles C. Willoughby. Fort Washington
(PA): Eastern National. 270 p.
KENNETH B. TANKERSLEY
Department of Archaeology
Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Cleveland, OH 44106
and
Department of Art and Anthropology
Augustana College
Sioux Falls, SD 57197
