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What Remains Sept 22nd-November 27th, 2024
Meyers Gallery
Steger Student Life Center, UC Main street
Photography: Steve Plattner
In 2023, UNESCO inscribed World Heritage status on a group of four Hopewell sites in Ohio, adding them to the ranks of the Taj Mahal, Stonehenge, and Machu Picchu as places of “outstanding value to humanity”.
This extraordinary group of Hopewell earthworks represents a tiny portion of the approximately 10,000 Adena, Hopewell, and Ft. Ancient earthworks that dotted the Ohio Valley at the end of the 18th century. The number and scale of these sites, along with the tremendous sophistication and physical labor they required, represent one of the great accomplishments of early human history. Today, fewer than 1,000 earthworks remain.
In the 250 years since European-American settlers made their unrelenting push into the Ohio Valley woodlands, many of the tall conical mounds, long ridges, and geometric hilltop enclosures that somehow escaped destruction have been appropriated and incorporated – at times inexplicably – into cemeteries, a country club, subdivisions, parks, farms, a strip mall and even an amusement park.
Through photographs and their corresponding “back stories,” What Remains explores these marvels of Indigenous astronomy, science, and society – constructed by skillful `mound builders' across the Ohio Valley between 500 BCE and 1750 CE – one basketful of earth at a time with sharpened sticks and hoes made of clam-shells.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
DAAP Aronoff complex, 2624 Clifton Ave & The Steger Student Life Center, U.C. Main Street , Cincinnati, OH, United States, Ohio 45221
