The Temporal and Social Implications of Ohio Hopewell Copper Ear Spool Design

Ruhl, Katharine C.; Seeman, Mark F.

doi:10.2307/2694113

Cited by 20 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…The curation and deposition of a large quantity of obsidian debitage, as well as copper nuggets and partly worked copper, at the Hopewell site also suggest that production took place in the earthworks. K. Spielmann (2009) has suggested that earspool production, or at least their final assembly, may have been organized in workshops at earthwork sites given variation in disk construction within a single earspool and across earspools in the same pair (Greber and Ruhl 1989;Ruhl and Seeman 1998). Similarly, based on the fact that different kinds of yarns were included in individual textiles, multiple artisans may have worked on the same textile (Wimberly 2004).…”

Section: Worldmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…The enduring tradition of skilled flaking of bifaces continued but their maximum size increased and risks were taken, such as completing large obsidian bifaces only after the raw material was brought to southern Ohio from Wyoming. Technological skill was required to craft the abundant copper earspools (Ruhl and Seeman 1998) and copper celts (Bernardini and Carr 2005). In contrast, most mica cut-outs would have been relatively simple to produce, requiring only a template, the raw material, and a sharp blade.…”

Section: Worldmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Specialists may be 'attached' to or embedded in (Ames 1995) the ritual context itself, and among the Hopewell, much art production may have taken place in or near the earthworks, as people 'geared up' (K. Spielmann 2008) for elaborate communal ceremonies and feasts (Seeman 1979b). Ruhl and Seeman (1998) have identified different earspool technological styles at different earthworks and Carr and Mazlowski (1995) have described different textile styles at different earthworks. As noted above, hamlets lack evidence of production except for mica cut-outs.…”

Section: Worldmentioning

confidence: 97%

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The materiality of spiritual engagement: art and the end of Ohio Hopewell

Spielmann

2013

World Art

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This paper addresses the question, 'If art makes society, under what conditions does society cease to make art?' The answer, I suggest, lies in art's loss of social efficacy. The case I use to explore the cessation of art is that of the Ohio Hopewell. In southern Ohio, between AD 1Á400, a ceremonial system known as Ohio Hopewell developed, flourished, and was then entirely abandoned. This ceremonial system was characterized by elaborate material objects (art) made from exotic materials, communal rituals involving pageantry and burial of the dead that were held in large geometric earthwork enclosures, and large-scale offerings of objects in these ceremonial precincts. After AD 400, art, the large earthen enclosures, and elaborate offerings ceased to be made for a considerable period of time in the Midwestern US. This paper draws on theoretical, historical, and ethnographic information to make the argument that the collapse of Ohio Hopewell and its art represents a radical transformation in how people perceived materiality. The paper argues that the cessation of art represents a widespread and active rejection of ritual authority and of the power of material objects to mediate with the spiritual world.

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Section: Worldmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Worldmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Worldmentioning

confidence: 97%

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The materiality of spiritual engagement: art and the end of Ohio Hopewell

Spielmann

2013

World Art

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“…Much of the production of Ohio Hopewell ritual items was concentrated within these earthworks. Crafting of certain ornaments, such as mica and copper cutouts, appears to have been carried out in these precincts by multiple craftspeople (Baby and Langlois 1979;Mills 1917;Ruhl and Seeman 1997). Likewise, the production of axes and other social valuables appears to have taken place in some British Neolithic causewayed enclosures, which, like Hopewell earthworks, were at least in part focused on mortuary ritual (Craddock et al 1983;Sharpies 1991).…”

Section: Organization Of Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feasting, Craft Specialization, and the Ritual Mode of Production in Small‐Scale Societies

Spielmann

2002

American Anthropologist

236

127

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Economic intensification has been documented in a diversity of small-scale societies. The existing archaeological theory concerning such intensification has tended to privilege economic and political explanations and largely ignores social action and ritual performance as motivations for economic change. In this article, 1 use both ethnographic and archaeological data to argue that ceremonial feasting and the need for socially valued goods, which are critical for ritual performance and necessary for a variety of social transactions, create the demand that underwrites and sustains economic intensification in small-scale societies. Food for large-scale feasts is acquired through the intensification of food production and procurement targeted specifically for feasting, rather than from the surplus available from routine subsistence production. Large-scale demands for socially valued goods tend to result in specialization on the production of "extraordinary" material culture, which is characterized by two modes of circulation, in networks of social obligations or as offerings in sacred locations. [ E CONOMIC INTENSIFICATION has been documentedin prehistoric small-scale societies in a diversity of times and places. By small-scale 1 mean those societies ranging from several hundred to several thousand people in size and characterized by relatively uncentralized political systems. The explanations archaeologists have offered for economic intensification in such societies have largely been economic-and concern issues such as population and resource imbalance or risk avoidance (e.g., Netting 1990; Price and Brown 1985; Wills 1992)-or political, focusing on the actions of aspiring elites (e.g., Clark and Parry 1990; Halstead 1989; Hayden 1992; Renfrew 1982). Such approaches tend to ignore one of the most salient sources of increased economic production: the individual and communal ritual participation and performance of members of entire populations.My interest here is in documenting the ways in which people intensify their economic activities in response to the sustained demand engendered by communal and individual ceremonial obligations. 1 focus in particular on the acquisition of food used in feasts and on the production of objects that are critical for ritual performance and necessary for a variety of social transactions. 1 term the latter "socially valued goods" and discuss how the peculiar nature of demand from the ritual context influences their qualities and how the scale of demand shapes the organization of their production. 1 suggest that a primary motivation for subsistence intensification and craft specializa-tion in small-scale societies lies not in subsistence provisioning but in the demand for items critical for social reproduction. Specialized production to meet these demands can, in fact, become quite complex.Garwood and colleagues (1991) have discussed the difficulties that archaeologists have in defining ritual, noting that some approaches view ritual as a particular kind of social practice, while others...

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“…Twenty more shafts indicated the scale and sustained practice (Strathern1969; Vial 1940). An archaeological example comes from the Ohio Hopewell, where a relatively mobile population that normally lived in small hamlets, congregated for communal rituals at geometric earthworks and produced thousands of copper ear spools (Ruhl and Seeman 1997). Additionally, Spielmann cites Damon and Wagner (1989) on the mortuary practices in the Papua New Guinea Massim for the time, effort, and resources used for community mortuary rites.…”

Section: Hypothesis: Ritual Production Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Prestige: A Ritual Production Model for Stone Tool Specialization in Naqada Period Egypt

Skarzynski¹

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This dissertation looks at the organization and development of specialized production in 4th millennium BCE Egypt. At the outset of this period northeastern Africa was occupied by small-scale groups of pastoralists and early agriculturalists. By the close of the 4th millennium BC, the Nile Valley was one of the earliest instances of a society with centralized political organization, extensive labor division, and institutionalized inequalities.This research brings data on stone tools and settlement sites to bear on competing models of specialization. Many models of specialized production have focused either on the production of symbolically meaningful goods for the elite, or the production of utilitarian goods for the masses; they have not considered the production of symbolically meaningful goods for commoners. In Egypt the prevailing theory for the development of specialized production is a prestige-goods model, where elites sponsored the production of items used to display status and which were not available to all. However, this model does not account for all specialized production. A review of the evidence for specialization in Egypt shows that some items made by specialists were quite widely used (e.g., lithic blades, black-topped red ware ceramics), and so do not fit a prestige-goods model. To explore how the production of various stone tools was organized and developed, a model of ritual production outlined by Spielmann (2002) was considered. This model recognizes that people have often increased their economic production in order to make items needed for ritual activities, such as life cycle events (e.g., birth, marriage, death) and community-encompassing rituals. These ritual activities involved many members of society, not a restricted subset. Expectations were developed for archaeological patterns of raw material choice, production locations, and find contexts that should be observed if the ritual production model can account for the development of some aspects of specialized production in -ivEgypt. These expectations were evaluated based on examination of lithic artifact collections from the settlement sites of el-Mahâsna, Abydos, and Nag el-Qarmila, and comparison to published data from other sites and online museum databases. This research showed that there were many different ways that stone tool production was organized at the intra-site and regional levels. Some of stone tools-early fishtail knives, axes, large-blade knives, and microendscrapers-fit the ritual production model for the development of specialized production quite well. Preferences for certain raw materials were evident, and these preferences could not be accounted for by functional considerations or access to local resources. Instead, the raw material choices probably related to the symbolic significance of their colors, which can be traced from the Pharaonic back to the Predynastic periods. These tools were produced in conjunction with ritual activity areas, and the tools themselves were found in ritually significant cont...

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The Temporal and Social Implications of Ohio Hopewell Copper Ear Spool Design

Cited by 20 publications

References 14 publications

The materiality of spiritual engagement: art and the end of Ohio Hopewell

The materiality of spiritual engagement: art and the end of Ohio Hopewell

Feasting, Craft Specialization, and the Ritual Mode of Production in Small‐Scale Societies

Beyond Prestige: A Ritual Production Model for Stone Tool Specialization in Naqada Period Egypt

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