Fort Ancient Earthworks
The Fort Ancient Earthworks are a series of earthen embankments that extend for more than three and one half miles around a high bluff along the Little Miami River in southwestern Ohio. Although it is called a "fort," it probably never served as a defensive work. Ditches are located inside the walls rather than outside as might be expected in a fortification. There are more than 60 gateways in the walls, making it difficult to defend the site against enemies.
The earthwork includes two major components called the South Fort and the North Fort. The South Fort is the oldest section. A long, narrow neck referred to as the Middle Fort connects these two parts. The most prominent gateway is located in the northeastern part of the North Fort. Two mounds are located just outside the gateway. These framed the entrance to a set of parallel walls that once extended northeastward for nearly half a mile where they ended in a semi-circular enclosure surrounding a mound.
The Hopewell culture (100 B.C. to 500 A. D.) of prehistoric Native American people constructed the earthworks. Later native residents built a village and a cemetery within the walls of the already ancient South Fort. Archaeologists mistakenly assumed that these villagers had built the earthen walls. It was called the Fort Ancient culture (1000 A.D. to 1650 A.D.) after the name of the site. This mistake has caused confusion for later students of Ohio archaeology.
Recent excavations at Fort Ancient have discovered the remains of Hopewell culture houses and ceremonial features both inside and outside of the enclosure walls. It is not known whether the houses located inside the enclosure were occupied before or after the enclosure was built. It also has yet to be determined whether the houses were the dwellings of more or less full time residents, or the temporary shelters of visitors.
The Fort Ancient Earthworks is an Ohio Historical Society site open to visitation. It is located seven miles southeast of Lebanon, in Warren County. In addition to the earthworks, the site features a museum with interpretive exhibits about Ohio's ancient past. The Fort Ancient Earthworks site also is a National Historic Landmark.
Postcard showing the great east walls of Fort Ancient, ca. 1920-1950. Fort Ancient, built 2,000 years ago by prehistoric Native Americans, is an earthworks with 18,000 feet of earthen walls enclosing 100 acres. It is located in Warren County, Ohio and maintained as a state memorial by the Ohio Historical Society.
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References and Suggested Reading
- Blosser, Jack, and Robert C. Glotzhober. Fort Ancient: Citadel, Cemetery, Cathedral or Calendar?. Columbus: Ohio Historical Society, 1995. - Available from Amazon.com
- Byers, A. Martin. The Ohio Hopewell Episode: Paradigm Lost and Paradigm Gained. Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 2004. - Available from Amazon.com
- Carr, Christopher, and D. Troy Case, eds. Gathering Hopewell: Society, Ritual, and Ritual Interaction. New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2005. - Available from Amazon.com
- Case, D. Troy and Christopher Carr, eds. The Scioto Hopewell and their Neighbors: Bioarchaeological Documentation and Cultural Understanding. New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2008. - Available from Amazon.com
- CERHAS. EarthWorks, Virtual Explorations of the Ancient Ohio Valley. The Center for the Electronic Reconstruction of Historical and Archaeological Sites (CERHAS). Cincinnati, OH, 2006.
- Connolly, Robert P. and Bradley T. Lepper, eds. The Fort Ancient Earthworks: Prehistoric Lifeways of the Hopewell Culture in Southwestern Ohio. Ohio Historical Society. Columbus, OH, 2004. - Available from Amazon.com
- Cowan, C. Wesley,. First Farmers of the Middle Ohio Valley: Fort Ancient Societies, A.D. 1000-1670. Cincinnati: Cincinnati Museum of Natural History, 1987.
- Griffin, James Bennett. The Fort Ancient Aspect: Its Cultural and Chronological Position in Mississippi Valley Archaeology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1966.
- Henderson, A. Gwynn, ed. Fort Ancient Cultural Dynamics in the Middle Ohio Valley. Madison, WI: Prehistory Press, 1992. - Available from Amazon.com
- Korp, Maureen. The Sacred Geography of the American Mound Builders. Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 1990. - Available from Amazon.com
- Lepper, Bradley T. Ohio Archaeology: An Illustrated Chronicle of Ohio's Ancient American Indian Cultures. Wilmington, Ohio, Orange Frazer Press, 2005. - Available from Amazon.com
- O'Donnell, James H., III. Ohio's First Peoples. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004. - Available from Amazon.com
- Pacheco, Paul J. , ed. A View from the Core: A Synthesis of Ohio Hopewell Archaeology. The Ohio Archaeological Council, Columbus, 1996. - Available from Amazon.com
- Romain, William F. Mysteries of the Hopewell: Astronomers, Geometers, and Magicians of the Eastern Woodlands. Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 2000. - Available from Amazon.com
- Woodward, Susan L., and Jerry N. McDonald. Indian Mounds of the Middle Ohio Valley: A Guide to Mounds and Earthworks of the Adena, Hopewell, Cole, and Fort Ancient People. Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 2002. - Available from Amazon.com
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"Fort Ancient Earthworks", Ohio History Central, May 1, 2006, http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=2404
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