About 3,000 years ago, the Indian people living in the Ohio River valley began building earthen mounds. Archaeologists would later call these people Adena, or more accurately, the Adena Complex. Archaeologists define this cultural complex by its burial mounds, its public structures, and the development of long-distance trade. Adena mounds are found in Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Archaeologists have documented more than 500 Adena sites in a geographic area from Ohio to the Atlantic coast.
The Adena ceremonial sites include circular earthworks with interior ditches. In his entry on Adena in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, William Dancey writes:
“Most often these do not contain burial mounds and are considered non-mortuary ritual centers. In several instances, excavation has revealed a ring of post molds forming a circular structure, possibly a fence or screen, around the edge of the ditch.”
In terms of archaeological terminology, the Adena mounds are earthworks. Archaeologists Jarrod Burks and Robert Cook, in an article in American Antiquity, explain:
“We use the term ‘earthwork’ to refer to sites with earthen enclosures. Ohio earthwork sites come in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, arrangements and they contain an array of components including: earthen embankment walls and enclosures, mounds, borrow pits, water-holding features, stone pavements, arrangements of postholes in small and large circles, the remains of wooden buildings and other structures, and pit features of various sizes.”
Jarrod Burks and Robert Cook also write:
“Enclosures most often consist of earthen embankments, from a few inches to nearly twenty feet high, with adjacent ditches.”
Regarding chronology, Lynda Shaffer, in her book Native Americans Before 1492: The Moundbuilding Centers of the Eastern Woodlands, places Adena in the Second Moundbuilding Epoch and dates it as flourishing from 500 BCE to 100 BCE. The earliest Adena sites, however, date to about 1100 BCE and this cultural complex continued until about 200 to 250 CE.
While it is common to assume that the shared characteristics of the sites which are identified as Adena signify the existence of a single culture, this is not necessarily the case. In his book An Introduction to Native North America, Mark Sutton reminds us:
“Adena was not a single culture, but a number of Early Woodland cultures in the same general region that shared general similarities.”
In other words, we should not think of Adena as a nation or tribe, but as a set of shared features: Adena is an archaeological designation. In his book The First North Americans: An Archaeological Journey, Brian Fagan writes:
“Adena was a series of mortuary rituals and spiritual beliefs that have come down to us in the form of hundreds of burial mounds in its Ohio heartland alone.”
The Mounds
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Adena complex is the construction of earthen mounds, some of which contain burials. Adena burial mounds rarely exceed 17 feet (5 meters) in height, and most are less than 10 feet (3 meters). There are two mounds—Grave Creek Mound in West Virginia and the Miamisburg Mound in Ohio—which reach 65 feet in height (20 meters) and were used over generations.
The construction of Adena burial mounds began with clearing the ground and preparing a clay surface for the skeleton or cremated remains. In some cases, the remains were sprinkled or painted with red or yellow ochre. Soil was then dumped over the grave forming a small mound. The burial mounds can range from only about a foot in height to as high as 62 feet.
According to Ian Shaw and Robert Jameson, in A Dictionary of Archaeology:
“Adena mounds were often built-in prominent places, presumably serving as important landmarks for nearby dispersed populations.”
In a report in American Archaeologist, Joe Navarri writes:
“Adena people intentionally built their mounds away from their residences and at the boundaries of neighboring communities.”
They would return to the same mounds year after year to bury the dead and to pay homage to their ancestors. In his book Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a Continent, Brian Fagan writes:
“Some mounds were used again and again, with more log tombs added to an existing tumulus, until it reached vast dimensions.”
These mounds can be viewed as a kind of stacked cemetery with several layers of burials.
Sacred Enclosures
In addition to burial mounds, the Adena Complex is known for earthworks which are often described as sacred circles or sacred enclosures. These earthen enclosures, often near the burial mounds, have shallow ditches and adjacent embankments. In their 1945 book The Adena People, Archaeologists William Webb and Charles Snow report:
“Usually, these sacred enclosures are circular in form, though they may be square, rectangular, elliptical, crescentic, panduriform, or hexagonal.”
Most are circular. While they are called “sacred” enclosures, their purpose is not actually known. These enclosures may have been used as meeting places or ceremonial areas. In his book The First North Americans: An Archaeological Journey, Brian Fagan writes:
“Sometimes, the sacred enclosures occur in a group of two to eight, as if the people from different social units were congregating at the same location.”
These social units could have been clans, or villages. It has been suggested that while the Adena people gathered for special ceremonies or funeral rites, during much of the year they lived in widely dispersed small villages.
Burials
Adena is often defined by its treatment of the dead. In an article in National Geographic, archaeologist George Stuart notes:
“The Adena seem to have had an almost obsessive preoccupation with honoring the dead.”
In general, the Adena people disposed of dead bodies in several ways. The simplest was to dig a shallow, elliptical pit which would then be lined with bark. The body would then be placed in the pit, the pit covered with bark, and a mound of dirt heaped on top of it. Over time, more bodies and more dirt would be added resulting in a fairly large burial mound.
In some cases, instead of putting the entire corpse in the pit, the mourners would place a bundle of bones in the pit. This practice suggests that the body had been exposed on an open platform until the flesh decayed. The bones would then be removed and buried. In his book Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a Continent, Brian Fagan reports:
“In some cases, only a few parts of the body were buried in the mound, as if the corpse had been dissected before burial.”
When most Adena people died, their remains were cremated, and the cremains buried in the floor of a house. Some people, however, were buried in log tombs. The log tombs appear to have evolved during the Late Adena Period. In his book The First North Americans: An Archaeological Journey, Brian Fagan writes:
“The most impressive tombs, however, were built with large logs lining the sides and floor, and making up the roof. The mourners often sprinkled the dead with powdered red ocher, sometimes with yellow ocher, graphite, or manganese dioxide in small amounts.”
About the formation of the burial mounds, William Webb and Charles Snow write:
“Log tomb burials and deposit of cremated remains frequently took place on the floor of a house. On the house floor a small earth mound was built over the burial; the house was then burned and a larger mound erected over it.”
William Dancey summarizes Adena burial practices this way:
“As currently defined, Adena consists of a pattern of burial in which the individual is placed in a shallow sealed grave or log tomb, or is simply laid out on the surface and then covered with earth.”
Writing in 1945, William Webb and Charles Snow describe it this way:
“Adena burials show abundant evidence that the individuals accorded log tomb burial in mounds constituted a selected minority of the population, the remainder, the majority probably being cremated. The basis of selection is unknown, but such evidence suggests a complex society wherein those selected for log tomb burial represent an honored group, perhaps members of the ruling or chieftain class.”
It should be noted that Adena burial practices varied both geographically and temporally. Over time, new practices, such as the log tombs, emerged. Archaeologists working during the first half of the twentieth century did not have accurate dating methods, such as radiocarbon, available, so determining temporal patterns were based on things like stratigraphy. As the archaeological record expanded and with more accurate dating, the interpretation of Adena burials has changed. More recent works do not see Adena society as stratified or as having social classes. Regarding the social organization of the Adena people, William Dancey writes:
“Most likely there was no permanent social hierarchy; leaders may have come forth when needed, but their role did not become institutionalized.”
In his book Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a Continent, Brian Fagan writes:
“There are few signs of any social distinction between individuals, as if society was still basically egalitarian.”
The log tombs were not necessarily the final resting place for all eternity. William Dancey reports:
“The initial graves in the earliest of Adena burial mounds were sealed subsurface pits. This practice gave way to above-ground, reusable tombs that housed the dead until someone else came along, at which time the previous occupant was bundled up and reinterred in another part of the mound area.”
Artifacts
Most of the Adena artifacts recovered by archaeologists are grave goods, that is, items buried with the dead. In his book Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a Continent, Brian Fagan writes:
“At first Adena mourners buried the dead with mostly utilitarian objects, artifacts such as flint blades, drills, scrapers, stone axes and adzes, also simple bone tools. These appear to have been the personal possessions of the deceased. The dead wore strings of small copper beads, shells, including some large marine gastropods, and occasionally bone.”
The distinctive Adena artifacts include a tubular pipe style, mica cutouts, copper bracelets, incised tablets, stemmed projectile points, oval bifaces, concave and reel-shaped gorgets, and thick ceramic vessels decorated with incised geometric designs. They also carved stone tablets with intricate zoomorphic designs which were buried with the dead. Lynda Shaffer reports:
“Since traces of pigment have been found on some, they apparently were used to stamp designs upon some flat surface, perhaps bark cloth or deerskin.”
On the other hand, Stuart Fiedel, in his book Prehistory of the Americas, reports:
“Late Adena grave goods sometimes included stone tablets, engraved with highly stylize representations of buzzards and other birds of prey. These tablets may have been used to prepare red ochre for ceremonial use, or to sharpen bone awls, perhaps for tattooing.”
The Adena people used the fine-grained siltstone which is found in the area for making pipes. They made both tubular pipes and platform pipes. The platform pipes often have a sculpture, usually an animal, at one end. According to Lynda Shaffer:
“Siltstone was an excellent material for pipemaking since it was easily drilled and carved and had a nice sheen when polished.”
With regard to Adena pipes, Brian Fagan, in his book Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a Continent, writes:
“The most distinctive grave artifacts were tubular pipes, fabricated from clay-stone, or very fine-grained silicate in a straight or cigar-shaped tubes with a blocked end.”
The Adena people also fashioned bracelets from copper. Archaeologists William Webb and Charles Snow report:
“The bracelet, usually a nearly circular rod bent into an elliptical form with its free ends nearly touching, is made of a single nugget of native copper.”
To make the bracelet, the copper nugget was hammered into a thin sheet and then rolled into a cylinder. This cylinder was then bent to form the bracelet. In addition to copper bracelets, the Adena people also make copper rings in a similar fashion.
The materials from which the artifacts were made came from a fairly large geographic area. In a report in American Archaeology, Paula Neely writes:
“The culture was also notable for its trade network, through which they obtained copper from the Great Lakes region, shells from the Gulf of Mexico, and mica from West Virginia.”
Pottery
The Adena people made several different styles of flat-bottomed pots. These ceramic pots often had lug handles, and some had decorated exterior and interior surfaces. In his chapter on Adena pottery in The Adena People, James Griffin writes:
“The distinguishing features of Adena pottery which serve to group it into a recognizable unit are the predominant plain and sometimes cord marked surface, the characteristic vessel shapes, the rim treatment, and the small rim nodes.”
James Griffin also writes:
“The Adena people, with a very few possible exceptions, did not place pottery vessels with their dead.”
Housing and Subsistence
While it is often assumed that constructing monumental architecture, such as the Adena mounds, requires large numbers of people who live in nearby cities, this is not the case for the Adena Complex. The Adena people lived in smaller villages—usually 10 houses—and may have moved seasonally to exploit a variety of wild food and fiber resources. William Dancey reports:
“The archaeological record suggests that the Adena practiced a hunter-gatherer-horticultural subsistence strategy within small territories and lived in household groups of unknown stability.”
The Adena people were not nomadic hunter-gatherers, but rather they seem to have been semi-sedentary, occupying a village for several months, then traveling away from the village for a period to hunt for game animals and to gather wild plant foods. Then they would return to the village to harvest domestic crops.
Local domesticated plants included sunflower (Helianthus annuus), goosefoot (Chenopodium berlandieri), erect knotweed (Polygonum erectum), maygrass (Pharlaris caroliniana), marsh elder (Iva annua), and little barley (Hordeum pusillum). Maize (corn in American English), which was one of the staple crops of later American Indians in the region, was not yet present.
The Adena people lived in round houses which ranged in size from about 6 meters (20 feet) in diameter to about 24 meters (80 feet) in diameter. The posts for the house walls were angled outward so that water would not run down the walls. The roofs were cone-shaped and covered with bark. In many cases, the central portion of the house would be left without a roof, forming an open central courtyard.
More Ancient America
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Ancient America: A very brief overview of stone quarries
Ancient America: A very brief overview of the Hopewell moundbuilders
Ancient America: Avonlea, the early bow hunters
Ancient America: Effigy Mounds
Ancient America: Solar Calendars
Ancient America: A very short overview of Clovis
Ancient America: Kennewick Man (The Ancient One)
