People of the Forest, 2000 B.P.

People of the Forest, 2000 B.P.. . Architects of Monumental Earthworks. Fort Hill Earthwork was built 2000 years ago by indigenous people who flourished in the temperate deciduous forest of Eastern North America. The exact ancestral lineages and languages that united the earthwork builders over their many generations of activity remain a mystery. In the absence of these facts, the peoples are usually referred to simply as the Hopewell Culture, a modern term. Southern Ohio was the epicenter of the Hopewell Culture's far-flung influence in eastern North America, and the canvas for what many historians believe was the highest artistic expression of any native culture in Eastern North America, before or since., Classic Ridgetop Enclosure. The Hopewell Culture is best known for roughly two dozen giant ceremonial earthwork complexes, outlined by circular and square walls built along major southern Ohio floodplains. One of the nearest such complexes is Seip Mound on Paint Creek (illustrated below). Fort Hill's earthworks typify an alternative form of Hopewell earthen architecture that is found on hills with flat, mesa-like ridge tops, of which only a dozen have ever been found. Fort Hill is one of the best preserved of these hilltop earthworks. Here tall walls of earth and stone were built to follow the irregular contour of the outer rim of the bluffs, the walls interrupted with multiple gateways. The exact use of this lofty gathering space is unknown.