The Shriver Circle Earthworks (
33 RO 347)
are an
Ohio Hopewell culture
The Hopewell tradition, also called the Hopewell culture and Hopewellian exchange, describes a network of precontact Native American cultures that flourished in settlements along rivers in the northeastern and midwestern Eastern Woodlands from 1 ...
(200 BCE to 500 CE)
archaeological site
An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...
located in
Chillicothe in
Ross County, Ohio
Ross County is a county in the Appalachian region of the U.S. state of Ohio. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 77,093. Its county seat is Chillicothe, the first and third capital of Ohio. Established on August 20, 1798, the ...
. At in diameter the site is one of the largest Hopewell circular
enclosures in the state of Ohio.
Site description
The site is an oblong circular
enclosure
Enclosure or Inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or " common land" enclosing it and by doing so depriving commoners of their rights of access and privilege. Agreements to enclose land ...
with an encircling ditch, located a little under to the south of the
Mound City Group and a short distance west of the
Scioto River
The Scioto River ( ) is a river in central and southern Ohio more than in length. It rises in Hardin County just north of Roundhead, Ohio, flows through Columbus, Ohio, where it collects its largest tributary, the Olentangy River, and meets t ...
. The oblong shape is anomalous among large Hopewell circles which are usually nearly perfect circles. A low conical mound measuring across and high was located at the enclosures center. When first surveyed and excavated in 1846 by
Ephraim George Squier and
Edwin Hamilton Davis it measured over in diameter, in height, and in width. The ditch measured in width and was in depth. The embankment and ditch were broken into six segments by six unevenly spaced gateways around the perimeter.
[ ] An early crude map drawn sometime before 1813 by
Thomas Worthington Thomas or Tom Worthington may refer to:
*Thomas Worthington (Douai) (1549–1627), English Catholic priest and third President of Douai College
* Thomas Worthington (Dominican) (1671–1754), English Dominican friar and writer
*Thomas Worthington ( ...
, Ohio's sixth governor whose house
Adena is the namesake of the
Adena culture, has notations that indicate the enclosure and conical made had lost half of their height due to plowing by 1846 and were originally at least in height. The crude map also indicated nine gateways.
[
The central conical mound and the eastern gateway form a ]summer solstice
The summer solstice, also called the estival solstice or midsummer, occurs when one of Earth's poles has its maximum tilt toward the Sun. It happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere ( Northern and Southern). For that hemisphere, the summer ...
sunrise alignment with a hill known as Sugarloaf Mountain located several miles to the east across the Scioto River valley.
Excavations
Before excavations were first done at the site in 1846 a road and part of the Ohio and Erie Canal
The Ohio and Erie Canal was a canal constructed during the 1820s and early 1830s in Ohio. It connected Akron with the Cuyahoga River near its outlet on Lake Erie in Cleveland, and a few years later, with the Ohio River near Portsmouth. It also ...
had already been constructed during the early 1830s on the western third of the enclosure.[ Squier and Davis partially excavated the central mound in 1846. They found a number of artifacts made from ]copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...
and mica
Micas ( ) are a group of silicate minerals whose outstanding physical characteristic is that individual mica crystals can easily be split into extremely thin elastic plates. This characteristic is described as perfect basal cleavage. Mica is ...
as well as large quantities of charred bones. The artifacts resemble those found at Adena culture sites more than they do artifacts excavated from the nearby Mound City Group. They included the site in their influential book '' Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley'' in 1848. They named the site after Henry Shriver, who owned the site and much of the farmland in the area during the mid-1800s.[
Much of the site was damaged by farming in the 1800s and early 1900s. During ]World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
the United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
built a military training base, Camp Sherman, on the site. The circle was graded down and the camps parade ground
A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats, or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of s ...
was constructed in its location. After the war, the camp was razed and Ohio State Route 104
State Route 104 (SR 104) is a north–south highway in Southern Ohio. Its southern terminus is at U.S. Route 23 (US 23) in Portsmouth, Ohio and its northern terminus is at US 33 in Columbus. The route passes through or close to t ...
, a road which runs through the site, was widened causing even more damage. Part of the site was covered by the Chillicothe Correctional Institution when it was constructed in the early 1960s. By the early 2000s when archaeologists from the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park began doing magnetic surveys the sites features were so flattened that they could not be distinguished by eye from the surrounding fields although they could be made out on old aerial photos.[ In 2005 a series of ]LIDAR
Lidar (, also LIDAR, or LiDAR; sometimes LADAR) is a method for determining ranges (variable distance) by targeting an object or a surface with a laser and measuring the time for the reflected light to return to the receiver. It can also be ...
investigations and field excavations were conducted at the site.[
]
See also
* Hopeton Earthworks
* Moorehead Circle
Moorehead Circle was a triple woodhenge constructed about two millennia ago at the Fort Ancient Earthworks in the U.S. state of Ohio.
The outer circle, discovered in 2005 by Jarrod Burks, is about in diameter. Robert Riordan, Professor of Archa ...
* Newark Earthworks
The Newark Earthworks in Newark and Heath, Ohio, consist of three sections of preserved earthworks: the Great Circle Earthworks, the Octagon Earthworks, and the Wright Earthworks. This complex, built by the Hopewell culture between 100 BCE and 4 ...
* Stubbs Earthworks
The Stubbs Earthworks ( 33 WA 1) (also known as Bigfoot Earthworks and Warren County Serpent Mound) was a massive Ohio Hopewell culture (100 BCE to 500 CE) archaeological site located in Morrow in Warren County, Ohio.
Site description
The site ...
* List of Hopewell sites
This is a list of Hopewell sites. The Hopewell tradition (also incorrectly called the "Hopewell culture") refers to the common aspects of the Native American culture that flourished along rivers in the northeastern and midwestern United States fr ...
References
External links
Mound City Group, National Park Service
{{Pre-Columbian North America
Ohio Hopewell
Mounds in Ohio