One of the northern derivatives of Hopewell of interest to a few scholars is the anomalous Effigy Mound culture of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa. The remains attract attention because of the range of animal forms represented by the low effigy mounds. There are sometimes burials at the "vital" points - hips, head or heart area - of the animals, but there is only the simplest of grave goods. {How these nature worship spiritual guide representations can be talked about as "anomalous" is beyond me. The Serpent Mound near Cincinnati is a key worldwide astrological figure. The Nazca Line effigies of animals are well known. The Dragon Project and other ley line and Gaian concepts of earth energy and center point location of the Mayan urban and pyramid complexes are definitely related. Stonehenge is recently shown connected to the Serpent Mound and certain astrological or astronomical observations are discussed in Ancient American magazine. Vortexes of energy are obvious in places like Sedona, Arizona. The Giza main pyramid is on such a vortex and some people talk about time warp effects there. But we must remember most archaeologists like their academic brethren the psychiatrists, don't believe in psychic visions, soulful interpretations and other spiritual things that all early people on earth clearly knew very well. What good is there in denial of what others did or used as central to their lives, even if 'science' of this variety was right? They aren't right anyway, but please ask this question of the scholars who are interpreting these important cultural artifacts. Why avoid the actual beliefs of the people? The reason to locate the burial in points where the energy is collected relates to the cult of the individual involved and their tribal guide, as well as to their sex and specific power ally. It is part of many less dramatic rituals such as the Star of David and the pentagram.} Burials are either flexed or bundle types. The link with Hopewell is found in ceramics and in the interest in raptors and certain mammals. At one group, Sny-Magill (now a national monument in Iowa), Beaublein (1953) thought two mounds of the group to be Hopewellian in construction and content. McKern has reported several sites of the Effigy culture (McKern 1928; 1930), as well as the Wisconsin Hopewell - locally called the Trempealeau (McKern 1931). Jennings (1965a) and Rowe (1956) have attempted summaries of the Effigy culture. The sites often lie on ridges overlooking a stream valley. The mounds take about a dozen shapes: conical, biconical, oval, linear, panther, bear, bird (goose, raptor), deer, buffalo (?), turtle, lizard, wolf, or fox, and beaver. These are arranged in clusters or lines with no regularity as to the forms depicted; the linear and conical ones are mixed with the effigies. {Likely no relation to guides or spirits but rather to allow earth energy to build or flow in some manner enhancing or guarding the people. Their ancestral forefathers who are often dug up and moved in the Iroquois or eastern regions mimics practices carried on around the world. [There is a genetic energy and spiritual reality that psychology has shown to exist between family members separated at birth (Harvard) and especially 'twins' (Minnesota's University).]} The groups may contain dozens of mounds... In New York, Ritchie (1965) identifies Hopewell in the artifacts and mounds of the Squawkie Hill phase; earlier, he had incorporated this phase in his Point Peninsula culture series. Griffin (1964) also notes the Hopewellian content of the New York finds. Furthermore, he mentions the extension of dentate rocker stamping on pottery well beyond the appearance of other Hopewell traits and also comments on the blurring or fading of the Hopewell complex after about A.D. 250. {It was almost completely gone by 500 AD. This is an important time in world history. The Ostrogothic disappearance from Italy that led to major fortifications in South America as discovered by Gene Savoy after this time when Jennings wrote this book might also have led to the end of the Hopewell cultural control. We know Roman statues were found in Mexico with a 99% archaeological certainty according to University of Calgary Professor Emeritus David Kelley. But few scholars have drawn any connection even with the huge forts in South America. Probably it is pure co-incidence. But when you know the Visigoths are Merovingian related and the people like Dagobert had a trepanned skull as well as other things we will lay before you later you might think it less a co-incidence. The influx of Keltic 'Red-Heads' from the Taklamakand Desert near the present Great Wall occurred at this time too, according to Prof. Covey of Wake Forest University, and Professor Joan Price of the American Archaeological Institute.} This is about the time the southern derivatives began to appear and the cultures of the Middle West and East developed stronger regional differences, with many local sequences replacing the more uniform culture characteristic of Hopewell dominance. Even so, as in the widespread dentate pottery decoration, vestiges of Hopewell ancestry can be noted. In New York, for example, the development of late Point Peninsula into Owasco and even historic Iroquois can be tied through a few traits to Hopewell (Griffin 1964). The Owasco culture of New York, accepted as being ancestral to the Iroquois, is dated at A.D. 1000 to 1300.... Farming tools included elk-scapula hoes, as well as two types of flint hoe. Food-storage pits are common in some sites. |
