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Multimedia: The Great Hopewell Mystery
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Volume 52 Number 6, November/December 1999
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by Ronald Hicks
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TThe Maya and the Anasazi built roads that we believe were used for sacred
purposes. Did the Hopewell, an earlier prehistoric American culture in the
Ohio Valley, do the same? Searching for the Great Hopewell Road, a balanced
and informative video available from the Ohio Historical Society, provides
the answer--a qualified yes. The video focuses on the Historical Society's
own Bradley Lepper, who hypothesizes that a set of parallel earthen banks
visible from the Octagon Earthworks in Newark, Ohio, marks the northern end
of a ceremonial roadway that may have once led 60 miles south to
Chillicothe (see "Tracking Ohio's Great Hopewell Road," November/December 1995). Why such
a road may have existed, and whether it existed at all, consumes most of
the hour-long narrative.
Searching for the Great Hopewell Road
Thomas M. Law, producer
Pangea Productions Ltd. for American Public Television
first broadcast: April 16, 1999
$19.95;1-800-949-8670
Ronald Hicks is professor of anthropology at Ball State University.
© 1999 by the Archaeological Institute of America
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