The Hopewell tradition, also called the Hopewell culture and Hopewellian exchange, describes a network of precontact Native American cultures that flourished in settlements along rivers in the northeastern and midwestern Eastern Woodlands from 100 BCE to 500 CE, in the Middle Woodland period. The Hopewell tradition was not a single culture or society but a widely dispersed set of populations connected by a common network of trade routes.
Hopewell Interaction Area and local expressions of the Hopewell tradition
Hopewell mounds from the Mound City Group in Ohio
Carved mica hand, Hopewell Mounds
Serpent effigy, Turner Group, Mound 4, Little Miami Valley, OH
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, spans from the original peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, the era covers the history of Indigenous cultures until significant influence by Europeans. This may have occurred decades or even centuries after Columbus for certain cultures.
Artist's reconstruction of Poverty Point, 1500 BCE
Hopewell mounds from the Mound City group in Ohio
Monks Mound of Cahokia (UNESCO World Heritage Site) in summer. The concrete staircase follows the approximate course of the ancient wooden stairs.
An artistic recreation of The Kincaid site from the prehistoric Mississippian culture as it may have looked at its peak 1050–1400 CE
