Posted on 12/19/2007 3:48:49 AM PST by blam
Hopewell culture shows little evidence of warfare
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 2:56 AM
By Bradley T. Lepper
War, in one form or another, has been a part of the human experience for centuries.
Archaeologist Lawrence Keeley, in his book War Before Civilization, argues that it has been with us for millennia, but that historians and archaeologists have downplayed its importance because we like to think our ancestors were smarter than us and lived in more or less perfect harmony.
The evidence against that, however, is growing stronger with each discovery. Otzi, the 5,000-year-old Italian "Ice Man," died with an arrow in his back. Washington state's 9,000-year-old Kennewick Man had a spear point lodged in his hip.
In ancient Ohio, the earliest evidence for large-scale warfare is from the Late Prehistoric era, from about A.D. 1000 to 1550. Many villages of this era were built in defensible locations and often were surrounded by walls or ditches. Many of the bodies buried in the cemeteries have arrowheads embedded in them, or their bones show signs of other trauma.
What about earlier periods? Kent State University archaeologist Mark Seeman thinks warfare was important to the Hopewell culture, between about A.D. 1 and 400.
In his contribution to the new book The Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians, Seeman writes that the Hopewell practice of using certain human bones, such as jaws, as ornaments suggests that these objects were trophies of war.
Yet, Hopewell village sites were not built for defense, few Hopewell skeletons show evidence of violent death, and the so-called war "trophies" might be ritual objects related to ancestor worship.
Seeman concedes that "Hopewell wars must have been different than those of later times," but he argues that these differences are telling us about the evolving cultural contexts of warfare.
The gigantic earthworks of the Hopewell required unprecedented cooperation among communities. If they had been at war with one another, I don't think they could have created such architectural marvels.
Bradley T. Lepper is curator of archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society.
GGG Ping.
What? I can't get my head around that statement.
The ‘in tune with nature and the spirits’ thing.
The gigantic earthworks of the Hopewell required unprecedented cooperation among communities. If they had been at war with one another, I don't think they could have created such architectural marvels.
Or maybe there was a uniting power that held sway over the region and villages were supposed to be undefended and the threat of violence was enough to keep people from fighting.
I dare say that one could look at many villages in Northern Italy during the height of the Roman Empire and find many of the results: villages without defenses, very little violence to the remains of those buried, giant construction projects, and the remains of executed criminals decorating the road leading to the village.
Doesn't mean the people didn't know what war was, it meant that the Romans were strong rulers that kept control and kept the peace.
As I recall, villages built by the Iriquois during the height of their power were silimar—ramshackle villages with orchards, gardens, etc....they knew no other tribe was strong enough to attack them. Their defense was their offense.
save
It was also so that a local chief couldn’t rise up against the nation as a whole. Any chief which started building defenses around his village was viewed as a threat.
This is why in Europe, during any seriously feudal period, masons were to be in the employ of the authorities exclusively, so that they couldn’t build walls without approval of the crown.
Yea, this is exactly what they said about the Anasazi until they found human remains in their barbecue pits. They had no need to defend against anyone because they were cliff dwellers with impenetrable defenses. And, for decades they were revered as the true civilized early inhabitants of America. Until it was learned that every not and then they would round up some poor natives and cook them for dinner.
Their villages had huge earthworks, but it wasn’t built for defense?
When I was a kid, they used to talk about how peaceful the Mayans were, especially compared to the Aztecs. Then, in the 1960’s I think, archeologists started looking more carefully at the images they painted. Bye-bye peaceful Mayans.
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Thanks Blam and Renfield.Hopewell village sites were not built for defense... "The gigantic earthworks of the Hopewell required unprecedented cooperation among communities. If they had been at war with one another, I don't think they could have created such architectural marvels."Yeah, that follows. Non-sequitur alert! Did every PreColumbian site feature a wall around itself? Did the Aztec fight "flower wars"? War is "different" in every culture and civilization, except where it counts, which is that people fight and kill one another. |
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I wonder if they’ve dated the walls? They may have been built earlier in the period when they were a rising power and still invulnerable to attack. We see many castles in Europe that were built to defend against enemies early on but are obsolete now.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
Mr. Logan, here we go again.
Wasn’t it warfare that drove the Anasazi to the cliffs to begin with?
For anyone who’s actually visited the cliff dwellings it is perfectly obvious that they didn’t live there for the amenities. They lived there because they were scared to death.
I’ve been to Montezuma Castle and that’s the impression I got.
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