Fort Ancient Earthworks

At a glance

Overview

Fort Ancient is the largest ancient hilltop enclosure in North America: earthen walls 4 to 23 feet high, in places faced with limestone slabs, that follow the rim of a bluff about 270 feet above the Little Miami River in Washington Township, Warren County, and enclose roughly 100 acres in North, Middle and South sections. Hopewell people built it in stages roughly 2,000 years ago, carrying the earth in baskets, and used it as a ceremonial gathering place rather than a fort; people of the later Fort Ancient culture farmed and buried their dead on and below the hill between about 1200 and 1600. Settlers who took it for a fortification gave it its name, which archaeologists later gave to that whole Fort Ancient culture. Warren K. Moorehead's surveys and his 1890 book pushed the state to buy the first 180 acres in 1891, making it Ohio's oldest state park. It is owned by the Ohio History Connection and since September 2023 has been part of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The name

The walled hilltop looked like a fortification to its early discoverers, who called it a fort; the name stuck even though archaeologists now think its primary purpose was ceremonial. As the name indicates, the later people archaeologists call the Fort Ancient culture were first thought to have built it; it is now known they did not. (source)

Native American history

Hopewell people built the walls, probably between about 300 B.C. and A.D. 250 by the NHL nomination's estimate (UNESCO dates the Hopewell earthworks to 1-400 CE). They lived in small settlements inside the enclosure and in a village just east of the North Fort, and their burial mounds held copper sheets, mica cut-outs, effigy pipes and obsidian points from as far as the Rocky Mountains. A triple timber circle (the Moorehead Circle) stood near today's museum. After the Hopewell left around A.D. 250, people of the Fort Ancient culture lived in a village on the South Fort and at the Anderson Village below the hill between about 1200 and 1600, and archaeologists have unearthed 150 burials at Anderson Village alone; they left shortly before Europeans arrived. For the historic period, the 1882 county history says the Miami claimed the Warren County land and that Little Turtle ceded that claim at the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. The Ohio History Connection has removed American Indian artifacts from the site museum while it consults with Tribal Nations under NAGPRA.

• Fort Ancient hilltop enclosure (North, Middle and South Forts): earthwork, Bluff east of the Little Miami River, Middle Woodland (Hopewell), c. 300 B.C.-A.D. 250 or 1-400 CE
• Hopewell village east of the North Fort: village, Outside the east wall of the North Fort, Middle Woodland
• Moorehead Circle (triple woodhenge): other, North Fort, near the museum, Posts dated 40 B.C.-A.D. 130; burned timber A.D. 250-420
• Calendar mounds (four stone-covered mounds in a square): mound, Northeast corner of the complex, Middle Woodland
• South Fort village and cemetery: village, South Fort, Fort Ancient culture, c. 1200-1600
• Anderson Village Site: village, Little Miami valley below the west side of the fort, Fort Ancient culture, c. 1200-1600
• Treaty of Greenville cession: treaty, Warren County lands claimed by the Miami, 1795

Stories

A fort that was not a fort

Walls on a cliff-edged hilltop looked like a fortress, and some archaeologists originally thought the site was built as a shelter against enemies. The evidence points the other way: the ditches lie inside the walls rather than outside, where they would help a defender; the walls are broken by 84 gateway openings that could never all have been held in an attack; and no evidence has been found for a population large enough to form a real defense force. Drawing on the whole body of research, archaeologists now read the walls as built for social, economic, political and ceremonial purposes. Research has also shown the site's layout was aligned with significant astronomical events: four stone-covered mounds in the northeast corner form a square, and the southwest one lines up with gateway openings to mark solar and lunar events. (source)

Moorehead's plea and Ohio's first state park

Warren K. Moorehead explored Fort Ancient in 1885 and 1887 and signed the preface of his book there on September 20, 1889. The land was split among farmers: Alfred Cowdin, who had turned away earlier explorers, let him excavate, and George Ridge, who owned 14 acres of the fort, let his crew dig up a stone pavement under his house and front yard. The book, published in 1890, openly aimed to push a historical or scientific society to buy and protect the site, pointing to Harvard's rescue of Serpent Mound as the model. (source)

Two peoples, one misleading name

Moorehead saw that two different peoples had lived at the site but thought they were there at the same time. In 1908 William Mills went further and credited the walls to the people who had built villages on the South Fort, whom archaeologists came to call the Fort Ancient culture after the site. Digs in 1939 and 1940 found a Hopewell village east of the fort and Hopewell artifacts in the pits where the wall earth had been dug, proving the Hopewell built the walls centuries earlier. The Fort Ancient people came hundreds of years after the hilltop was abandoned, farmed the valley and hilltop between about 1200 and 1600, and had no contact with the builders. The name of a whole archaeological culture thus rests on an early misattribution. (source)

A woodhenge in the North Fort

In 2005 Jarrod Burks detected a large buried ring at Fort Ancient. Excavations led by Robert Riordan of Wright State University found it was the outer of three concentric timber circles, about 60 meters across, which Riordan estimated once held about 200 posts. A post trace dated to between 40 B.C. and A.D. 130, and burned timber from a pit to A.D. 250-420, both in the Hopewell era. Riordan named it the Moorehead Circle after the archaeologist who helped save the site. Its purpose is unknown, though it was likely ceremonial. (source)

The village at the foot of the hill

A small settlement grew on the river bottom below the earthwork, named for the 'old fort' above it. It had a post office from 1846, a hotel and summer resort built by a Mr. Howell for about 100 guests, and shipped grain, hogs, peaches and hundreds of bushels of blackberries. By 1881 it held twelve families; Daniel Perrine kept the hotel and store and was also justice of the peace, postmaster and freight agent. (source)

Timeline

• c. 300 B.C.-A.D. 250: Hopewell people build the giant earthwork with digging sticks and shell hoes, live in small settlements in and beside it, and hold burial ceremonies on the hilltop. (source)
• c. 40 B.C.-A.D. 130: A ring of some 200 wooden posts, the outer ring of the Moorehead Circle, is raised in the North Fort. (source)
• c. 250: With the end of Hopewell burial practices in Ohio, the hilltop is deserted. (source)
• c. 1200-1600: Fort Ancient culture farmers live in a village on the South Fort and at the Anderson Village below the hill, then leave shortly before European contact. (source)
• 1795: At the Treaty of Greenville, Miami chief Little Turtle cedes the Miami claim to the lands that became Warren County. (source)
• 1809: The Philadelphia Port Folio prints the first published plan and description of the earthwork (the NHL nomination dates it 1810). (source)
• 1815: Daniel Drake describes the work in his Picture of Cincinnati and reports that Joel Wright made the first survey. (source)
• 1820: Caleb Atwater publishes a description in the Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society. (source)
• 1843: John Locke surveys the site; Squier and Davis include his map in 1848, calling Fort Ancient 'one of the most extensive, if not the most extensive, work' in the entire West. (source)
• 1846: A Fort Ancient post office opens May 28 with Thomas C. Nelson as postmaster, in the small village at the foot of the hill. (source)
• 1874: Lewis M. Hosea notes a stone pavement between the parallel walls and recognizes both Hopewell remains and the South Fort village. (source)
• 1881: A spring flood sweeps away the river bridge at Fort Ancient village, built about 1841-1842; an iron bridge 186 feet long replaces it the same season. (source)
• 1882: In a Peabody Museum lecture titled 'Fort Ancient, Ohio,' Harvard's Frederic Ward Putnam announces that preliminary steps have been taken to secure the site as a public park. (source)
• 1887-1891: Warren K. Moorehead makes the first systematic excavations at the fort and the nearby Anderson Village, working intermittently. (source)
• 1890: Moorehead publishes Fort Ancient: The Great Prehistoric Earthwork of Warren County, Ohio, with a map surveyed by Gerard Fowke and Clinton Cowen, urging its purchase and preservation. (source)
• 1891: The State of Ohio buys the first 180 acres, the start of Ohio's oldest state park; eight later purchases add about 500 acres. (source)
• 1908: William C. Mills excavates and wrongly concludes the Fort Ancient people built the walls. (source)
• 1933-1935: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Ohio Historical Society restore many of the walls. (source)
• 1939-1940: Excavations by the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society (1939) and an Ohio State Museum and Ohio State University team (1940) find the Hopewell village east of the fort and Hopewell material in the borrow pits, showing the Hopewell were the builders. (source)
• 1966: Fort Ancient is listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15 as a National Historic Landmark. (source)
• 1982-1991: Patricia Essenpreis shows the walls were built in multiple stages and documents a three-level limestone pavement near the Twin Mounds. (source)
• 1995-1996: Robert Connolly excavates the North Fort ahead of a new museum and finds 10 habitation structures. (source)
• 2005: Jarrod Burks detects the outer ring of the Moorehead Circle, about 60 meters across, by geophysical survey. (source)
• 2008: The U.S. Department of the Interior places Fort Ancient, with other Hopewell earthworks, on the Tentative List for UNESCO World Heritage nomination in January. (source)
• 2022: The Department of the Interior formally nominates the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, including Fort Ancient, in January. (source)
• 2023: On September 19 the World Heritage Committee inscribes the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, with Fort Ancient one of its eight sites, as the 25th U.S. World Heritage Site. (source)

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org: index
• en.wikipedia.org: index
• en.wikipedia.org: index
• npgallery.nps.gov: 66000625 text
• ohiohistory.org: fort ancient earthworks nature preserve
• ohiohistory.org: hopewell ceremonial earthworks inscribed as ohios first unesco world heritage site
• whc.unesco.org
• archive.org: fortancientgrea00moorgoog djvu.txt
• archive.org: historyofwarrenc00chic djvu.txt
• kb.osu.edu: content
• commons.wikimedia.org: Category:Fort Ancient