Seip Earthworks
The design and building of a Hopewell earthwork in Ohio. This reading uses the introduction and the sections “A Mysterious Culture,” “Remarkable Design,” and the first paragraph of “The Central Mound.” It leaves out the sections on respecting heritage, Seip today, and visiting, and the site maps.
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Introduction
Two thousand years ago, the region between Seip Earthworks and Chillicothe was one of the most important cultural centers in eastern North America. It stayed that way for hundreds of years. On high terraces along the Paint Creek and Scioto River valleys, almost two dozen giant geometric earthwork complexes were built. An Indigenous tradition now called the Hopewell culture built them. Seip Earthworks was one of the most magnificent engineering feats of them all. It had over two miles of embankment wall that enclosed over 36 hectares (89 acres). A large, partial circular enclosure is 494 meters (1620 feet) across. A smaller circle, 289 meters (948 feet) across, is attached on the west. A smaller, very precise square, 329 meters (1079 feet) on each side, is attached on the southeast.
A Mysterious Culture
Between 1 and 400 A.D., southern Ohio saw an extraordinary blossoming of cultural development. The Hopewell people did not live in villages or farm on a large scale. Even so, Indigenous people of the Hopewell Culture made amazing advances in mathematics, engineering, art, trade, and astronomy. But why they built so many huge ceremonial complexes in this area is still a mystery. There is no evidence that people lived within these earthworks. Instead, these huge architectural wonders seem to have been designed for large ritual gatherings. The timing of these special ceremonies may have been set by astronomical cycles. Celebrants from far away may have made pilgrimages to these sacred enclosures.
Remarkable Design
It is clear that complexes like Seip Earthworks were not just a random heap of earth. The geometric shapes are precise in their symmetry. The design and size of Seip Earthworks are very similar to four other complexes around the Chillicothe area. So all five must have come from engineering plans made by the same group of people. Baum, Frankfort, Works East, Liberty, and Seip Earthworks each have a small circle, a large circle, and a square. Early American archeologists Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis mapped and measured these five complexes in the 1840s. Each square was the same size: 1,080 feet on a side, 27 acres. This impressive fact suggests that the Hopewell people had a common unit of measure 2,000 years ago. Also, the sizes of the three shapes show that the Hopewell even understood mathematical relationships between circles and squares.
The Central Mound
Seip Mound is the enormous reconstructed mound in the center of the great circle enclosure at Seip Earthworks. It is the third largest burial mound the Hopewell are known to have built. It measures 240 feet by 160 feet by 30 feet high. It covered the floors, fire pits, and burials of two very large connected buildings with a small building between them. Archeologists of the Ohio Historical Society found many beautiful artifacts here in 1925. One is the famous clay Seip Head, now on display in the Ohio History Center in Columbus, Ohio. Also, between stacks of copper breast plates, they found some of the few whole samples of Hopewell cloth. It was preserved by the copper salts that formed over the breastplates. The cloth was woven of milkweed fibers. It was dyed to make patterns of circles and curves like the Hopewell earthworks.