Ohio Hopewell: Ancient Crossroads of the American Midwest

The Field Museum houses one of the largest archaeological collections of Hopewell Culture artifacts in the world. This collection—primarily from Warren K. Moorehead’s 1891–1892 excavation at the Hopewell Mound Group near Chillicothe, Ohio—dates to the origins of the museum itself. Moorehead’s excavations were undertaken for the 1893 World Columbian Exposition, an event that brought together anthropological materials from around the world and later resulted in the founding of the Field Museum of Natural History.

In 2015, our “Ohio Hopewell: Prehistoric Crossroads of the American Midwest” project was funded through a Humanities without Walls, Global Midwest Pilot Grant. The goal of this project was to provide significant time depth for the concept of a “Global Midwest” by illuminating a two-thousand year history of large-scale convergence and cultural influence rooted in the American Midwest. The resources available through this online archive pertain to The Field Museum’s Hopewell collection. We hope that the digitized documents, inventories, and photographs presented here will foster research and interest in the Hopewell Culture of the Ohio River Valley and serve as a catalyst for future work to create a larger, more comprehensive, repository.

"Ohio Hopewell" presents six different forms of information from The Field Museum’s Hopewell archaeology collections: Archival Documents related to original field excavations; a Catalog Report of Hopewell objects; Finding Aids for the relevant archival collections; Catalog Cards describing some individual objects; Warren K. Moorehead’s photographic Excavation Albums; and a collection of artifact Images.