The Hopewell culture flourished in the Eastern Woodlands some 2,000 years ago, and its monumental earthworks and beautiful art have captivated and puzzled students of American prehistory for 200 years (see American Archaeology, Spring 1998). Searching for the Great Hopewell Road, a new one-hour video, combines archival photographs, aerial videography, computer animation, and interviews with archaeologists and Native Americans to provide an engaging look at the Ohio Hopewell.
Bradley Lepper, an archaeologist with the Ohio Historical Society, hypothesizes that two parallel earthen walls stretched some 60 miles from the Newark earthworks to the heart of Ohio Hopewell culture near present-day Chillicothe. Lepper is intrigued by the causeway that runs to the southwest from the circle and octagon at Newark. While published maps of the 19th century show this causeway as two and a half miles long, Lepper has found an archival map from 1862 that traces the causeway for six miles. An accompanying document states that the causeway continued even farther. Lepper posits that it was once nearly 10 times longer and formed a road linking the Newark complex to Chillicothe.
Much of the video marshals evidence that such a monumental undertaking was possible. The video uses aerial footage of Hopewell earthworks and interviews with archaeologists to argue that the Hopewell had the technical means to create such a construction. But the question is not whether the Hopewell could have built a road, but rather did they. The video is at its weakest when Lepper provides the actual empirical evidence for his purported road. The only physical remains of the road yet found are just five miles from Newark.
Without supporting evidence from modern archaeological fieldwork, Searching for the Great Hopewell Road has a curiously antiquarian feel, inviting viewers to marvel at the Hopewell’s known accomplishments and speculate about what else they might have done. Certainly this is not a bad way to spend an hour, and the video well rewards those looking for an introduction to the Hopewell. Unfortunately, its emphasis on speculation at the expense of data recovery limits its usefulness as an example of how American archaeologists pursue the scientific study of the past. —Paul Gardner
