The Adena culture lasted from approximately 1000 B. C. to A. D. 200. The name Adena, pronounced uh-DEE-nuh, comes from an estate near Chillicothe, Ohio, where a large mound stands. The peoples of the Adena culture also built mounds in territory that is now Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New York, primarily along the Ohio valley.
Most of the Adena earthworks were burial mounds. Earthen hillocks were built up over burial pits or log-lined tombs. To make these imposing mounds in honor of their deceased leaders, the Indians dug up earth with sticks, bones, and shells and carried it to the burial site in woven baskets or animal-skin bags. With each new burial, another layer of dirt was dumped on a mound, making it even higher.
Adena Indians buried objects along with their leaders, just as the ancient Egyptians buried objects with their pharaohs under the great pyramids. At Adena sites, archaeologists have found beautifully crafted tools and ceremonial objects, including a wide range of stone, wood, bone, and copper tools; pottery; cloth woven from plant fibers; bone masks; stone pipes; stone tablets, often with bird designs; ornaments made from a mineral
The Adena Pipe, made from catlinite
Called mica; pearl beads; and stone and copper gorgets (worn over the throat).
In addition to burial mounds, Adena Indians constructed mounds with symbolic shapes. A famous example is the present-day Serpent Mound near Peebles, Ohio. This earthwork is a rounded mound about 2 to 6 feet high, 4 to 20 feet across, and 1,348 feet long. When viewed from above, it has the shape of a snake, with head and jaws seeming to close on another mound (possibly representing an egg) and a coiled tail. (It is assumed the Serpent Mound is of the Adena culture rather than Hopewell because a nearby burial mound has yielded Adena artifacts, but no artifacts have been found in the serpent itself.) Other Adena earthworks have geometric shapes, ridges of earth laid out in circles and usually surrounding the burial mounds.
Adena Indians were primarily hunter-gatherers. They found enough game and wild plant foods in their homelands to be able to live in permanent villages of poleframed houses covered with mud and thatch. Some among them might have grown sunflowers and pumpkins for food. Many of them eventually cultivated tobacco for smoking rituals.
It is not known for certain what became of the Adena Indians. Some of them might have been the ancestors of the Hopewell Indians whose culture came to displace them. Or perhaps Hopewell Indians were outsiders who invaded Adena territory and killed off remaining Adena peoples.
World History
