<< News >> Answer to Ohio earthworks might be in New Guinea
Submitted by coldrum on Tuesday, 20 January 2009 Page Views: 1658
Iron Age and Later PrehistoryCountry: United States State: Ohio Type: HillfortInternal Links:
Greenwood Village site, dating between A.D. 600 and 800, overlooks Ohio's Cuyahoga River. It had a number of embankments and ditches that run across the top of the plateau.
Archaeologists have debated if the hilltop enclosures of Ohio served as fortifications or places of ceremony. Aboriginal New Guinea earthworks may shed light on the question.
Charles Whittlesey, an early archaeologist and Civil War veteran, concluded that the Greenwood Village earthworks site in Summit County was a fort whose builders had "understood very well the art of turning natural advantages to good account."
In 1998, Stephanie Belovich, an archaeologist with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, investigated the site and argued that because the ditches had been placed along the inside of the earthen walls, the site couldn't have served a defensive function.
Therefore, she concluded, Greenwood Village was a ceremonial site.
In a paper in a recent issue of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Maine anthropologist Paul Roscoe disagreed. He wrote that Greenwood Village might have been a fort after all.
Roscoe, who studied warfare among the indigenous people of New Guinea, wrote that many of their fortifications were built along the same lines as the Greenwood Village earthworks. They were intended to defend against night attacks by making it difficult for attackers who had penetrated the defenses to make a quick escape.
Roscoe argues that our analogies should be based on cultures that shared similar levels of technology and basic ways of life.
For more see Bradley Lepper in the Columbus Dispatch.
The site lies in Summit County, Ohio, near the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
This news item was originally submitted by coldrum.
Note: Fortification or Ceremonial? Hilltop Earthworks in Ohio.
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