Hopewell Farming
How the Hopewell got their food. This reading leaves out the list of Eastern Agricultural Complex plants that the original page links to.
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People of the Hopewell era were among Ohio’s first farmers. Archeological evidence shows that they domesticated and grew a variety of hardy annual plants. This was long before people brought corn and beans into the area, several centuries later. These grown plants are called the Eastern Agricultural Complex (EAC). Many of the domesticated versions of these plants have since gone extinct. That is why some archeologists have nicknamed them “America’s lost crops.”
During the Hopewell era, people got the nutrients they needed by hunting, gathering, fishing, and farming. Hunting and gathering provided most of the Hopewell diet. But farming grew a great deal while the Hopewell movement flourished. People of the Hopewell era cleared fields near their family homes to grow food. They likely moved between different cleared areas when the soil wore out. This kind of farming is often called swidden farming or shifting cultivation. These fields were planted with crops of the Eastern Agricultural Complex. They included sunflower, squash, goosefoot, marshelder, maygrass, and little barley. Farming likely never made up most of what people ate. Still, it would have been a central part of daily life. It added to other, less reliable food sources. The interpretive garden outside the park’s Visitor Center shows the plants that helped feed people of the Hopewell culture. They gave them enough energy to build the earthworks they are famous for today.