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Ohio Hopewell Human Persons as Multiple Soul-Like Essences: Intercommunity and Regional Distinctions

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Being Scioto Hopewell: Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross-Cultural Perspective

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Abstract

This chapter continues from the previous the essential work of documenting Hopewell peoples’ own ideas about their souls. Such understandings, we argued there, are critical for gaining insight into Hopewell peoples’ culture-specific motivations for creating their elaborate rituals, earthworks, and artworks. These centered considerably on souls of the living and the dead, their interrelations, and ensuring their well-being. In the last chapter, we characterized soul concepts held by Scioto Hopewell peoples at large, including the population as a whole, males, females, and individuals of various age categories. Here, we compare and contrast the ideas held by multiple social groups of different geographic locations and scales, specifically three different communities in neighboring valleys within the Scioto-Paint Creek area, as well as eight other communities in other parts of Ohio.

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate Katharine Rainey Kolb and Rebekah Parks for drafting the map of Ohio, Figure 21.1.

Notes

  1. 1.

    Some of the data, ideas, and writings in this chapter have been presented more summarily in portions of Carr et al. (2018).

  2. 2.

    The exception is Charnel House West under the Seip-Pricer mound, where copper breastplates were placed under three corpses and other kinds of soul-leaves-body artifacts were placed on top of two corpses. If the mirror-like breastplates were thought to be portals for exiting souls, then the recognized directions of exit of souls would be 3 down and 2 up. If the breastplates were thought to be deflectors, then the envisioned directions of exit of souls would be 5 up. The latter situation simply enhances the directional bias for upward exit that would be the case if all soul-leaves-body artifacts were mirror-like artifacts. The global patterns reported in Chapter 20 are not changed.

  3. 3.

    The tortoise-shell ornaments are: a rectangular tablet placed with Burial 25 of Charnel Room D of Hopewell Mound 25; an asymmetrical, scroll-like cutout laid in Burial 45A in Charnel Room C of Hopewell Mound 25; and a cutout of a trumpeter swan set in Burial 2 in the Western Charnel Room of the Seip-Pricer mound (Shetrone 1926:83–84, 95; Shetrone and Greenman 1931:374, 443, figure 57).

  4. 4.

    Mica mirrors, significantly, do not belong to this list. They were nearly ubiquitous among the eight non-Scioto Middle Woodland peoples examined here (Case and Carr 2008:appendix 6.1).

  5. 5.

    The lack of placement of any artifacts at the heads of skeletons in Far Northeastern Ohio, that is, in the North Benton mound, and the marking of the chest for diverse soul functions/activities, including a soul leaving the chest, might be interpreted as the free soul having been thought by these peoples to reside in the chest rather than in the head. However, other strong contextual evidence indicates that the head was likely held to be the seat of the free soul (Chapter 11: Continuity over Space: Bird-Persons in Middle Woodland Societies beyond the Scioto Drainage—Northeastern Ohio).

  6. 6.

    This patterning also extends to the Great Miami drainage and Far Northeastern Ohio when considering body souls.

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  1. School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Christopher Carr

  2. Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Heather L. Smyth

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Carr, C., Smyth, H.L. (2021). Ohio Hopewell Human Persons as Multiple Soul-Like Essences: Intercommunity and Regional Distinctions. In: Being Scioto Hopewell: Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44917-9_21

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