An Introduction to
North America's Native People

ADENA

Towards the end of the Archaic (shortly before 3000-4000 years ago), some societies in the Eastern Woodlands began burying their dead in low, natural ridges and hills. Then around 1000 B.C., perhaps earlier, morturay rites assumed increasing importance and complexity - people began building small artificial mounds under which their dead were buried (a few mound burials date as far back as 5600 B.C. in Labrador). By 500 B.C. this burial mound ceremonialism extend across a broad region of the Eastern Woodlands, from the western Appalachians to the Mississippi Valley, and north into Wisconsin and Michigan.

Perhaps the best known of the early burial mound building cultures is the Adena of the central Ohio Valley (dates span time from about 2800 BP [800 BC] to 100 AD). Although people often speak and write of an Adena "culture," in actuality the term is really a label of convenience that covers dozens of Eastern Woodland cultures that thrived in the period between 3000 and 2200 years ago - cultures that varied markedly in material culture but were bound together by a shared ceremonial complex, the Adena.

Adena sites (many are now destroyed) are concentrated in a relatively small area - around 300 sites in the central Ohio Valley, with perhaps another 200 scattered throughout Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The importance of the Adena complex comes from its considerable influence on other contemporary cultures and cultures that came after it.

Although most Adena sites are burial mounds, many sites in the central Ohio Valley (as well as a few other regions) have, in addition to the burial mounds, large and largely unexplained earthworks. These range in shape from circles to squares to pentagons and sometimes enclose large fields and/or conical or domed burial mounds.

Burial Mounds and Funerary Customs
Earlier Adena burial mounds and funerary customs were simple:

• a small mound covered a single burial consisting of either the entire body (whichwas placed in a bark lined pit) or the deceased's cremated remains
• sometimes the burial lay in a house-like structure
• burials were often sprinkled with powdered ocher (red or yellow), graphite, or manganese dioxide
• dead buried with mostly their personal possession: utilitarian objects (tools of stone, infrequently of bone), as well as strings of beads (copper, shell, bone) &tubular pipes (made from clay-stone or fine-grained silicate)

As more and more burials were added, the mound grew in size.

After 2000 years ago, sweeping changes occured in burial customs with mound interments becoming far more elaborate:

• large burial chambers or enclosures that contained one or more bodies
• chambers were surrounded by circular structures with thatched walls and wooden post frames that were burned down, followed by mound construction
• sometimes canopies were erected over the grave and surrounded by a log platform
• sometimes the burial pit was lined with logs, then roofed over
• bodies were painted with bright pigments
• burials were accompanied by offerings of food and valuable artifacts (copper bracelets &finger rings; ornaments fabricated from mica, items made of copper, elaborate &highly decorated pipes
• many mounds were used repeatedly until they reach tremendous size (e.g., Grave Creek mound at Moundsville, W. Va., originally over 20 meters [67 feet] tall and contained over 70,000 cubic meters (2.5 million cubic feet) of earth)

Food Resouces
As in the Archaic, food resoruces came from an almost endless variety of plant and animal species (preserved human feces from one site even contain a grasshopper leg and a beetle fragment):

• deer, elk, black bear, woodchuck, beaver, porcupine, turkey, trumpeter swan, ruffed grouse
• several edible seed grasses and nuts
• sunflower, goosefoot seeds - both cultivated, although most likely they were secondary rather than primary resources

Artifacts

• wooden pestles, bowls
• mortars carved in bedrock
• woven sandals of grass and fiber
• beds made from grass and leaves
• various mining tools (gypsum [a prized white pigment] and crystalline mirabilite [perhaps used as a cathartic] were mined as early as 3000 years ago)
• cordage made from various plant fibers
• gourd utensils
• pottery items (good, plain utilitarian ware, conical or round bottom jars with check-stamping)
• tools for used in basketry manufacturing, as well as food acquisition and processing (knives, points, scrapers, hoes, nut stones, celts, etc.)
• spoons made from terrapin carapaces and bows made from human skulls
• shell &river mussel pearl beads

Textile arts were well developed - plain plaiting, twilling, and twining, with examples found near or around copper objects where copper salts preserved the material

Inter-regional Exchange
While the elaboration of burial customs is one of the major characteristics that distinguish Eastern Woodland cultures in the early post-Archaic period, it is not the only trait. Another is a gradual intensification of local and inter-regional exchange, begining with the Adena, expanding phenomenally to an almost continental wide system with the Hopewell and reaching its apogee with the Mississippian tradition.

For additional information on Adena, see:

• Essential Features of Adena Ritual by R. Berle Clay, Office of State Archaeologist and Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky (http://www.gbl.indiana.edu/abstracts/adena/contents.html)
• Adena, with links to photos of Adena artifacts from a site in Connecticut
• Burial Mounts (Adena Ritual)
• Ceremonial Circles (Adena Ritual)
• Adena Period
• Foreward (Adena Ritual)
• Adena Site Types (Adena Ritual)
• Adena Projectile Points
• Adena Culture
• The Adena People
• NA Archaeology: Adena
• The Adena Mounds
• Early Native American Cultures (1000 BCE - 1600 CE)
• Native Americans of Knox County
• Virtual Tour of the Americas

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Updated: 09 Mar 2000
by
crsmith