Ohio History Connection

Additional information has been identified concerning a fired-clay human figurine analyzed and reported by Bebber and colleagues (2018). Despite this figurine having been discovered within a box labeled “Hopewell Figurine—Hopeton Earthworks,” they argue against a Hopewellian affiliation based on Thermoluminescence (TL) dating, a comparative study, and the inability to firmly establish the specimen’s provenience. A rediscovered letter from Olaf Prufer offers a new site of origin and a more complete chain of custody, which is partially corroborated by photographs curated at the Ohio History Connection and a 1925 Boston Evening Transcript article. With this new information, we dispute Bebber and colleagues’ (2018) interpretation of the figurine’s acquisition, its alleged site of origin, and the conclusions of their comparative analysis. This case study does not support their call for more rigorous authentication of collector-acquired objects; rather, it documents the difficulty in reestablishing the provenience of objects once they have become disassociated.

No abstract available.

ABSTRACTAnthropologists often call attention to the problems posed by social inequality, but academic anthropology also reproduces many of the very inequalities that its practitioners work to critique. Past research on US academic hiring networks has shown evidence of systematic inequality and hierarchy, attributed in significant part to the influence of academic prestige, which is not necessarily a reflection of merit or academic productivity. Using anthropology departments’ websites, we gathered information on all tenured and tenure‐track faculty in PhD‐granting anthropology programs in the United States, totaling 1,918 individuals in all. For each faculty member, we noted their current institution and PhD‐granting institution, which we treated as a “tie” between those academic programs. With those data, we applied both statistical and social network analysis (SNA) methods to explain variation in faculty placement as well as the network's overall structure. In this article, we report on our findings and discuss how they can be used to help rethink academic reproduction in American anthropology. [academia, anthropology, social inequality, hiring networks, social network analysis]

Sacred Games, Death, and Renewal in the Ancient Eastern Woodlands: the Ohio Hopewell System of Cult Sodality Heterarchies, by A. Martin Byers, 2011. Lanham (MD): AltaMira Press; ISBN 978-0-7591-2032-7 hardback £59.95 & US$95.00; x+547 pp., 33 figs., 2 tables - Volume 21 Issue 3

A basic problem in archaeological research is determining site size and structure. In this paper we develop an approach that sequentially employs several survey techniques, including aerial photography, magnetic gradiometry, magnetic susceptibility, and shovel testing in the context of the Wildcat site (33My499), a Fort Ancient habitation site located near Dayton, Ohio. Defining site size and structure was a challenge at Wildcat since it is located in an agricultural field that has not been plowed for many years. Magnetic susceptibility and close-interval shovel testing worked well to define the basic site structure, and magnetic gradiometry and targeted magnetic anomaly excavations efficiently revealed a series of features. Alone, each of the methods produced somewhat misleading data regarding site size and structure, but together they revealed a much smaller site than originally anticipated.

The Cabin John Bridge (CJB), located just outside Washington, D.C., is a masonry arch with a central angle of 110°, an intrados radius of 40.9 m (134 ft), and a span of 67 m (220 ft). Construction of the bridge began in 1857 but was not completed until late in 1863 because of suspensions due to lack of appropriations and the Civil War. The CJB is part of the Washington Aqueduct (WA) and is still the longest single-span masonry arch in the United States. The bridge was designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the ASCE in 1972. The paper provides context for the bridge design and explains the construction technologies that were used. In the process, French and British influences on American masonry arch design practices at mid-19th century are revealed. The respective roles of Captain Montgomery C. Meigs, the chief engineer of the WA, and Alfred Landon Rives, his assistant engineer, are critically assessed. The paper provides, for the first time, relevant facts on Rives' education and engineering career. The performance of the bridge over 145 years is reviewed and discussed.

ABSTRACT The Ohio Memory Online Scrapbook is a common catalog with records from 328 cultural heritage repositories. Creating the online scrapbook, however, did not involve lengthy discussions of cataloging issues among the participants. Decisions about how materials would be described were made by staff at the Ohio Historical Society and were influenced by a commitment to integrating collections of different formats from multiple repositories, a centralized approach, use of Dublin Core, development of metadata standards, and adoption of controlled vocabularies. Participating institutions, and end users, are more concerned with the results of the cataloging process than the details of description.

The distribution of artifacts at the multi-component (Paleoindian through Middle Woodland) Munson Springs site (33Li251) is best explained by downward migration of objects through bioturbation processes rather than by a vertical sequence of occupation surfaces through a period of sediment accretion. At the noncultivated, 1800 m2, footslope site, the distribution of glacial diamict, loess, and drift- and bedrock-derived colluvium indicate widespread slope erosion during the late-glacial period with general backslope and footslope stability during the Holocene. Diagnostic Paleoindian artifacts were recovered from a BE soil horizon lying directly below fill material of a small (8 × 10 m) Early Woodland mound. Based on soil fine clay distribution, these artifacts lay about 30 cm below the premound land surface. Woodland artifacts are concentrated at depths of 10–20 cm immediately down slope from the mound. Soil horizonation and total and fine clay distributions within footslope profiles indicate no significant sediment accretion through the period of soil genesis and prehistoric site occupation. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.