Abstract
In the westernmost charnel house built by Scioto Hopewell peoples, in its westernmost chamber, at the far western end of the room, is a suite of burials that beg understanding. These are Burials 2 through 7 in the Pricer charnel building within the Seip earthworks. The burials stand out not only in their unique geographic position in the Scioto Hopewell cosmos, but also in their unusual body treatment, tomb architecture, and artifacts that provided theatrical flair. The six individuals were all laid out in full body, in contrast to the other 95 individuals placed on the floor of the charnel house, who were all cremated and put in small piles, save four individuals in two other rooms of the charnel house. The set of six were also given visual priority by having been laid out on a platform of clay and gravel that stood 4 ft above the charnel room floor and well above the low clay platforms on which the cremations were set. Distinguished from the greater anonymity of the other, cremated individuals, whose age, sex, robustness, and other identities were less clearly marked, the six inhumed obviously were, or were meant to represent, two couples, one a family with children, and possibly an extended family. Four of the individuals were young adults of child-bearing age, between 21 and 35, lain side by side: female, male, female, male. Two infants a year or less in age were positioned at the head of one couple. The six are the only example of this great a number of individuals placed within one log tomb in the entire Scioto Hopewell region. Further, each adult was surrounded by an oval of hundreds to thousands of pearls. One of the Seip females had a pair of copper effigy nostrils inserted in her nasal cavity and two long copper rods around which her hair braids had been woven. Three of the adults had similar yet complementary clothing with respectively meteoric iron, copper, and silver covered buttons. The pearl surrounds, nasal inserts, and hair-braid rods were unique in the Scioto Hopewell world with the exception of two other individuals who were similarly decorated—Burials 6 and 7 under Mound 25 in the Hopewell earthwork. They, also, were a pairing of a male and a female, of similar age to the two young Seip couples, were accompanied by an infant, and were situated in the farthest west charnel house under Mound 25. Placed above and dedicating the Seip-Pricer sixsome was a unique ceremonial grouping of five large community (Copena) smoking pipes carved in the shapes of an owl, a likely whip-poor-will, a probable bear, and two dogs, one of which is curiously depicted eating the brain from a human skull. Only the bear is commonly represented in Scioto Hopewell artwork and artifacts. All of these visually stunning and culturally unique features of Burials 2 through 7 hint at a staged, theatrical ritual of some kind … but with what characters and plot?
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Acknowledgements
I thank the Ohio History Connection (then the Ohio Historical Society), Columbus, for providing access to the field excavation photographs of the Ohio Hopewell burials that are studied in this chapter and that were uncovered in the Hopewell and Seip earthworks. I appreciate Linda Pansing, Curator of Archaeology, at the Ohio History Connection (then the Ohio Historical Society), for having located the 1928 floor plan of the Seip-Pricer mound (Mound 1) and having sent to me a copy. I am grateful to Dr. Brad Lepper, Senior Curator of Archaeology and Mr. Stephen M. Biehl, Archaeological Cataloger, at the Ohio History Connection for having checked the catalog records of the Natural History and Archaeology Departments of the Ohio History Connection, the photographs in the OHC’s Audio-Visual Department, and the artifact collections of the OHC’s Archaeology Department for information on the component parts of the headdress from Burial 11 in Mound 25 of the Hopewell earthwork. I thank Dr. Bret Ruby, Archeologist at Hopewell Culture Historical National Park, Chillicothe, OH, and Mr. William Pickard, Curator of Archaeology, the Ohio History Connection, for having sent to me images of the three paired or double-headed raptors from Burial 2 in Mound 13 of the Mound City earthwork. I appreciate Rebekah Zinser for having drafted the schematic profile of the Seip-Pricer mound at the location of the Great Multiple Burial.
Notes
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1.
Shetrone and Greenman, who excavated the Seip-Pricer mound and analyzed its contents, identified the form of the flying bird effigy pipe as “resembling” a whip-poor-will (Shetrone and Greenman 1931:374, 422) but left room for the possibility that it might be a nighthawk (ibid., 419). Although the two species are closely related, both being poorwill members of the nightjar family (Caprimulgidae), and both have very similar mottled camouflaging coloration and underwing markings when seen in flight from below on the ground, their habits are distinct. Historic Woodland Indians recognized the difference between the two species and focused much more attention on whip-poor-wills than nighthawks in their lore and rituals (Chapter 9). Only one reference to nighthawks was found in Chapter 9’s survey of historic Woodland and Plains Indian narratives and rites concerning whip-poor-wills and nighthawks. Thus, in this chapter, the flying bird effigy pipe is taken to depict a whip-poor-will and native narratives on whip-poor-wills are used to consider the possible meanings and roles that the bird effigy pipe might have had the ceremonies that were performed in the Seip-Pricer charnel house.
The nighthawk, being an animal of the night, a bird that flies and flies silently, and being secretive in not exposing itself to others, like the whip-poor-will and owl (Chapter 9: The Owl, The Whip-poor-will, Nighthawk) give the nighthawk the same potential natural-symbolic meanings and associations as the whip-poor-will and owl: ghosts; death; witchcraft; the ability of shaman-like practitioners to see into the darkness of the past, the future, other realms, and souls; the flight of ghosts and soul-flight of shaman-like practitioners; and divination for any of a number of purposes, including healing the living, heal the deceased’s souls of previously uncured ailments, locating and retrieving lost souls, locating game and enemies, acting as a psychopomp, and communing with spirit beings. Thus, the interpretation made in this chapter of the bird effigy pipe’s meanings and ritual uses would remain stable, whether the effigy was intended by its Hopewell creators to be a whip-poor-will, a nighthawk, or either.
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2.
Scioto Hopewell peoples made representations of the cardinal and semicardinal directions within square, circular, and diamond-shaped formats (Carr 2008a:56, figure 2.9). The meanings of these variations on the theme of a circumscribed and subdivided area have not yet been explored sufficiently, and some are debated (e.g., see Byers 2004:111–112, 123, 564, 569, table 5.1; versus Romain 2000:167).
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3.
It is possible that individuals from the other two Hopewell local symbolic communities in the area also attended the closing ceremony in the Western Charnel Room of the Pricer charnel house. This was almost certainly the case for the closing ceremony performed in Charnel Room E under Mound 25 in the Hopewell earthwork. An estimate of the minimum number of participants who attended that ceremony, based on counts of redundant artifacts placed within Altar 1 in Room E, is over 500 individuals and is in line with the scale of a large, demographically sustainable, regional breeding population (a “sustainable community”) composed of multiple local symbolic communities (Carr, Goldstein, and Weets 2005:507, table 13.6). Likewise, the number of deceased whose cremation ashes were deposited together in one basin in the Tremper charnel house was about 280 (Carr 2008e:137), within the range of demographically sustainable, regional breeding populations. However, no such large deposit of ceremonial items was created in any of the three rooms within the Pricer charnel house, and the number of individuals who were buried in each room is small (West Room = 47 individuals; Middle Room = 37 individuals; East Room = 18 individuals; floor burials only), suggesting each room’s ceremonial use by only one local symbolic community.
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4.
The stated functions of the listed shaman-like equipment are derived from ethnographic cases of equipment used by historic Woodland and Plains medicine persons (Carr, Weeks, and Bahti 2008:table 11.3, appendix 11), quantitative analyses of the associations of shaman-like equipment (“tool kits”) found in 767 Hopewellian burials across Ohio (Carr and Case 2005:216–218, table 5.5), and literature on shaman-like paraphernalia around the world (e.g., Halifax 1979; Harner 1990; Vitebsky 1995; references in Carr and Case 2005).
Other burials in the West Charnel Room that had shaman-like equipment are Burials 10 and 11, which abutted the east end of the high platform of the Great Multiple Burial, Burial 28, which was adjacent to the cache of many breastplates and a huge copper celt, and Burial 26. Burial 10, a cremation, had fragments of tortoise shell that could have derived from a rattle used by a shaman-like practitioner to maintain trances and possibly take soul flights while doing various tasks. Also with the cremation was an effigy copper headplate with raptor talon and bird tail-feather motifs, recalling bird and soul flight (Shetrone and Greenman 1931:413, figure 36). Burial 11, a cremation, was accompanied by a tortoise-shell comb. Tortoise-shell artifacts in general appear to have been associated with Scioto Hopewell shaman-like practitioners across cemeteries (Carr and Case 2005:216–218, table 5.5, Role Bundles 7 [divination] and 10 [healing]). Burial 28, a cremation, had a wooden tube that would have been useful for sucking out power intrusions and disease representations (Carr and Case 2005:216–218, table 5.5, Role Bundle 9 [healing]; Harner 1990; Vitebsky 1995). Burial 26 had three large three-pound chunks of galena that could have been used in divination tasks of various kinds (Carr and Case 2005:216–218, table 5.5, Role Bundle 6 [divination and public ceremonial leadership]).
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5.
I do not know of any Woodland versions of the earth-diver myth that tell of sea creatures encountered by the earth diver while it dove down and collected earth from the ocean’s bottom.
Spadefish are strong fighters with sharp spiny fins and, like sharks, can be dangerous to humans who interact with them.
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6.
Cremation Basin 1, in the West Charnel Room of the Seip-Pricer charnel house, was 3' × 3' 11" and 5 ½" deep. Cremation Basin 2, in the Central Charnel Room, was 1' 7" × 2' 3" and 4" deep. Cremation Basins 3, 4, and 5, in the East Charnel Room, were respectively 3' 2" × 2' 3" and 5" deep; 2' 5" × 4' 0" and 7" deep; and 2' 4" × 3' 2" and 5" deep (Shetrone and Greenman, 1927–1928; respectively, Monday, June 3, 1927; Friday, August 5, 1927; Friday, September 16, 1927; Monday, August 16, 1928; Saturday, August 28, 1928).
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7.
See Note 4 for the sources of information on the stated functions of the listed shaman-like equipment.
A carved shale effigy of the pupa of an insect, 3 in. long and solid rather than a hollow boatstone, was recovered from the Burnt Offering (Shetrone and Greenman 1931:378, 427, figure 47). It suggests the theme of transformation that permeates Scioto Hopewell artwork and world view and that has its roots in shamanic concepts and practices (Carr and Case 2005:199–203). How the effigy was used ceremonially in the West Charnel Room is unclear. However, it may have been used in conjunction with the steatite effigy owl and effigy turkey buzzard boatstones, which are almost the same size.
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8.
It may be significant that the number of pendulums that were used in the West Charnel Room and deposited in the Burnt Offering—25 items—is just about half the number of individuals interred there—47. In other words, if each plummet belonged to a different shaman-like practitioner, each practitioner would have tended to about two deceased individuals in preparing them for cremation and rites of separation and release of their free souls.
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9.
For telling Scioto Hopewell examples, see the two copper boatstones that held quartzite pebbles, at least one of which had pebbles of white and pink colors, and that were found in the Large Cache of the Tremper Mound in the Scioto valley (Mills 1916:285, 366–367, figure 96).
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10.
Baby’s (1954) forensic study of Scioto Hopewell cremation practices found in multiple ways that individuals who were cremated were cremated in the flesh. However, he examined only about one-third to one-half of the 104 cremations laid on platforms on the floor.
Scaffold burial was the “dominant” form of burial historically in the northern Prairies, northern Plains, western (MacKenzie) Subarctic, and the middle of the Northwest Coast of North America (Driver 1969:375). It occurred less commonly in various locations of the Eastern Woodlands.
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11.
Among the “dead” on low platforms on the floor of the West Charnel Room was a huge copper celt that was wrapped in cloth like the shrouds in which some deceased were wrapped and covered by 12 breastplates that had been balanced slanted against one another like a gable roof of a tomb. This structure, in turn, was housed within a log tomb with logs larger than typical and was made on top of a low clay platform that was larger than normal (Figure 13.2A, “Grave-like structure”). The breastplates were wrapped in up to 13 layers of fabric, again like shrouds for humans. Chapter 22 explains how the celt and the breastplates were probably attributed personhood by those who held rites in the West Charnel Room. The specific meaning of the celt and its burial to Scioto Hopewell peoples and its role(s) in the ritual drama performed in the West Charnel Room are not clear. Metallic breastplates were the paraphernalia used by a ceremonial society (sodality), the members of which came from multiple clans and communities. Metallic celts were markers of community-wide leadership (Carr 2005a:280–283).
The large celt burial was positioned near the end of the spiral of low platforms of the floor of the West Charnel Room(Figure 13.2B). At the end was Burial 28—a cremation that also was placed on a larger than normal clay platform and in a tomb made of unusually large logs. Burial 28 was accompanied by shaman-like paraphernalia, including a wooden tube that possibly was used to suck out spirit/disease/power intrusions, and imitation alligator teeth made of copper and imitation bear claws made of bone that possibly were used to send or remove disease and power intrusions. A copper breastplate was also included in the burial. How Burial 28 related to the celt burial and whether this individual had any role in the ritual drama performed in the West Charnel Room is unknown.
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12.
It is not fully clear from archaeological evidence that the Great Multiple Burial was built and the rites for the inhumations placed on it were performed after the construction of most of the low-platform burials, the performance of the preparatory, cremation, and soul-release rites for these individuals, and the burning and clay sealing of the paraphernalia used in the rites within the Burnt Offering. However, several lines of contextual evidence suggest that this was the actual sequence of acts. First, almost all the paraphernalia in the Burnt Offering pertain to what can be interpreted as the enactment of the creation of the Earth Island and its initial habitation by animals and plants, and to preparing corpses for cremation. Second, the only elements of the Burnt Offering that tie it to the Great Multiple Burial are the two boatstones found in the offering. Burial 2 of the Great Multiple Burial was accompanied by 3 boatstones. However, the 3 boatstones in the Great Multiple Burial were made of meteoric iron and were not effigies, whereas the boatstones in the Burnt Offering were made of steatite and were effigies (owl, turkey vulture). Also, the meteoric iron composition of the 3 boatstones in the Great Multiple Burial is not paralleled by the presence of any meteoric iron artifacts in the Burnt Offering. Third, the five large steatite Copena effigy smoking pipes that were placed directly above the Great Multiple Burial and that most likely were used previously in rites performed on the platform-stage with the Great Multiple Burial might have been placed in the Burnt Offering and decommissioned there, had it still been open when and just after the rites on the platform-stage occurred. However, the pipes were not placed in the Burnt Offering, suggesting the possibility that the Burnt Offering had already been burned and sealed at the time that the pipes were used in rites for the Great Multiple Burial.
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13.
The lengths of the Copena-style effigy pipes deposited about the Great Multiple Burial are: owl, 10"; whip-poor-will, 10.5"; dog eating head, 7"; broken dog, 12"; bear, 12".
From the center of the tall platform-stage to the east end of the West Charnel Room, just east of Burial 35, is 51 ft.
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14.
Less clearly relevant is the bear effigy pipe from the Great Multiple Burial. The bear was associated with the Below realms by historic Woodland Indians. This association was based on the bear’s habit of digging for its food (e.g., Overholt and Callicott 1982:76); its hibernation, residence, or council meetings in caves (e.g., Blakeslee 2003:100; Mooney 1900:250, 264, 328, 426; Skinner and Satterlee 1915:250, 252, 381); its residence in water (Overholt and Callicott 1982:60); and/or its origin in the water (Radin 1970 [1923]:177).
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15.
Three other historic Woodland Indian narratives imply or may imply that the dog met on the path to the afterlife by souls of the deceased was large. A Seminole narrative relates that the dog “shakes the log bridge [over the river] and hurls the unfortunate being into the stream” (Skinner 1962:73, case Fein044). It would take a large dog to move a heavy log spanning the width of a “river”. An Iroquois case (Beauchamp 1965:240, case Cas043) describes an abyss spanned by a log that two dogs on either side hold by their teeth. Depending on whether the soul of the deceased has been nice or cruel to their kind, the two dogs either hold on to the pole and let the soul pass or release the pole and let the soul fall into the abyss. The dogs would have to be large and strong to hold a log in their teeth while a human walked over it. In addition, at the bottom of the abyss is a “great dog” who is infected with “the itch” and gives it to those who fall into the abyss (ibid., 158). A Cherokee narrative tells of two dogs who are stars, who guard the two ends of the Milky Way path to an afterlife, who must both be fed for a soul of the deceased to pass by them, and who imprison the soul between them if it does not have enough food to feed both dogs (Hagar 1906:362, case Cas009). The status of the dogs as stars may imply their size and/or power.
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16.
Charnel Building A2 on Greber and Ruhl’s (1989:50, figure 2.16) map. The building surrounded Burials 23A and 23B.
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17.
The number of pearl beads, 5,000, comes from the museum accession list for Burials 6 and 7, on file in the Ohio History Connection (Ohio Historical Society), Columbus, Ohio. Shetrone’s (1926:64–65) site report describes only “hundreds of pearl beads” surrounding each of the two skeletons.
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18.
The design of the pad is composed of two scroll-like elements that possibly represent the head, beak, and eye of a long-beaked bird. The design incorporates positive-negative play, with the bird’s head and beak in positive outline and the eye in the negative uncarved space. This style of depiction, also known as figure-ground reversal, is common in Hopewell art (Carr and Case 2005:202, figure 5.5).
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19.
Four radiocarbon dates of charred wood from the Central Altar of Mound 3 in the Turner earthwork (Greber 2003:102–103, table 6.1) have an equally weighted, uncalibrated average date of A.D. 195. All four dates have standard deviations of ±50 years.
From Mound 25 in the Hopewell earthwork, three old-run radiocarbon dates from Altar 1 and Burial 260–261 in Charnel Room E and from Burial 248 just west of Charnel House C have high standard deviations (±200 to 250 years) and are not useful (Greber 2003:102–103, table 6.1). Six recently run radiocarbon dates, three from Altar 1 and three from Burial 260–261 in Charnel Room E all have low standard deviations (±50 years), but within each set of three, dates have wide ranges—uncalibrated 5 B.C., A.D.190, and A.D. 260 for Altar 1 and uncalibrated 520 B.C., A.D. 150, and A.D. 290 for Burial 260–261. These are not useful for estimating the absolute date of use of Charnel Room E but are all older than the suite of dates available from the West Charnel Room under the Pricer mound in the Seip earthwork (see below).
Ruhl’s (1996) earspool seriation is inconclusive about the chronological relationship between the charnel rooms under Hopewell Mound 25 and those under the Seip-Pricer mound. The 95% confidence intervals for the rank orders of spools in each of these two proveniences are too large and overlap too extensively (Greber 2003:92, figure 6.2) to make a determination.
A variety of contextual evidence interpreted by Carr (2005a:306–307) suggests that the closure of the charnel rooms and houses under the Central Mound within Mound 25 predated the closure of the charnel house under the Pricer mound, and probably by not more than a generation. These include the cross-dating of the rare artifact classes, social roles, and mortuary practices that characterize Burials 6 and 7 in the Far Western Charnel House under Hopewell Mound 25 and those that characterize Burial 2 in the West Charnel Room under the Seip-Pricer mound, including effigy copper nostrils that were inserted in the adults’ nasal cavities, copper hair-braid rods, metallic foil-covered buttons, and pearl-bead ghost water barriers that surrounded each corpse; the crossdating afforded by the two extraordinarily large copper celts found in only Hopewell Mound 25’s Charnel Room E and Seip-Pricer’s West Charnel Room (Carr 2005a:307); and the architectural reshaping of Hopewell Mound 25 to mimic the trilobed profiles of the Seip-Pricer mound, the Seip-Conjoined mound, the Edwin Harness mound, and the Old Town Conjoined Porter mounds (Carr 2005a:306; Moorehead 1892:115).
Three radiocarbon dates from the Pricer mound in the Seip earthwork, based on charred wood from Burial 16 and Burial 32 and on mixed wood and cremation ash from Burial 32 (Greber 1983:92; 2003:102–103, table 6.1), have a weighted average uncalibrated date of A.D. 312. All three dates are within 30 years of one another and have standard deviations of ±30 or ±40.
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20.
Both the Central Altar in Mound 3 at the Turner site and Altar 1 in the West Charnel Room E under Mound 25 in the Hopewell site contained large numbers of pearls and/or pearl beads, 46,000 and 19,000, respectively. However, neither charnel facility contained inhumations or cremations surrounded by pearl water barriers.
The Central Altar in Mound 3 at Turner included canines of wolves or dogs, but these do not likely represent the dog on the path to an afterlife. They were perforated for suspension as elements of necklaces and were accompanied by perforated canines of lynx, opossum, raccoon, fox, and badger. These animal teeth and the necklaces made from them together are most easily understood as symbols of the eponyms of clans (Thomas et al. 2005).
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21.
An uncalibrated radiocarbon date of A.D. 180 (1770 ± 80) was derived from Mound 13, Feature 56 (Brown 2012:52). The average obsidian hydration date for 6 analyzed fragments of bifaces from Mound 13 was A.D. 113. The six individual assays cluster closely together, falling within the 95% confidence interval of the pooled standard errors (Brown 2012:53; Hatch et al. 1990:475). See Note 19, above, for the dating of Mounds 3 and 4 in the Turner earthwork, Charnel Room E and the Far Western Charnel House under Mound 25 in the Hopewell earthwork, and the West Charnel Room under the Pricer mound in the Seip earthworks.
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22.
Mound 12 had one charnel house under it; Mound 13 covered two charnel houses, one on top of the other. Our interest here is in the one charnel house under Mound 12 and the upper charnel structure of Mound 13, which was the companion to the charnel house under Mound 12 (Brown 2012:134). Mills (1922:447–459) excavated the charnel house under Mound 12 and only the upper structure under Mound 13. Later, Brown and Baby (Brown 2012:158–162) excavated the lower structure.
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23.
The lower edges of both upper legs are rough and seem to indicate copper that has broken off, compared to the smooth outline of the neck. The original cutout may have included more of the upper legs, particularly the leg on the right as viewed.
The cutout depicts a woman, evident from her wide hips. Similar to this cutout, females who lack heads and lower arms are depicted by a copper headplate found with Burial 12 in Mound 7 of the Mound City earthwork and perhaps by a mica cutout from Burial 34 in Mound 25 of the Hopewell earthwork. The arms of the woman depicted in a copper cutout from Burial 11 in Mound 12 in the Mound City earthwork are either resting on her stomach or behind her lower back as if they were tied, depending on which side of the cutout was deemed to have been its “front”. The female sex of all three of these individuals makes it unlikely that they were captive and tortured warriors. In postcontact times, Woodland Indian warriors were seldom female. Female captives were seldom tortured (Knowles 1940).
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24.
Information on the nature of the dark earth and carbonaceous materials is insufficient to assess this interpretation.
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25.
Mills (1922:541, 544) identified the headdress as an effigy of a bear with a “greatly exaggerated nose”. However, a bear’s muzzle is rounded as well as short and the ears are rounded rather than pointed. Dr. Robert McCord, a biologist and paleontologist and Curator of Natural History at the Arizona Museum of Natural History, identifies the headdress as most likely a dog. Its long muzzle indicates a canid, its pointy ears indicate a canid instead of a felid, its whiskers suggest a carnivore, and its short tail and mobile floppy ears suggest a dog.
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A strong empirical starting point for investigating how earth-diver mythology was related by Hopewellian peoples to human death would be to document the variations in how muck soils, gleysols, bluish and greenish clays, and liquid puddled clay were used in constructing mound floors, primary mounds over the deceased, and mound-capping layers, in packing immediately around the decseased, and in stuffing the eye sockets, nasal openings, and/or ear openings of the deceased in Hopewellian mounds. These different practices may have had different meanings and may not all have been expressions of earth-diver mythology. Hall (1979:261) summarized literature on the historic Potawatomi and Menominee idea that victims of drowning who were found with their head openings filled with lake-bottom clay or mud had been taken by the Underwater Panther.
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Carr, C. (2021). The Family and Community in Three Scioto Hopewell Ritual Dramas of Death Journeys. In: Being Scioto Hopewell: Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44917-9_13
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