Fig. 15. A, [stone] pestle; B, reel-shaped stone [gorget]; C, “spud-shaped” stone gorget or pendant; D, grooved plummet. From the Baumer [subculture] and site.
Fig. 16. Pots from the [Crab Orchard] [period] of Baumer [subculture] recovered from the Sugar Camp Hill Site by Moreau Maxwell for Southern Illinois University. Vessel in center is roughly 16″ tall. (Photographs furnished through courtesy of Dr. James B. Griffin, Univ. of Michigan.)
The size of the Baumer settlement, the semi-permanent houses, the presence of chipped spades, [stone] pestles and pottery might lead one to think that these [people] were plant-growers rather than simple food storers. Comparing them with the acorn-gathering tribes of California, who were storers and not food growers, it is seen that these, too, had permanent settlements with well over one hundred inhabitants, rather substantial houses, stone pestles, and some tribes, at least, had pottery vessels. The Californians doubtless had digging tools since the rooms of some houses were dug four feet down into the soil.
Traces of Hopewellian influence, possibly indicating inter-marriage with Hopewellians, have been noted at the Sugar Camp Hill site (date undetermined) in Jackson County, which is presumably later than Baumer. However, the Baumerians like the native Californians were conservative, for four centuries intervened between the oldest Hopewellian village in the north and the earliest known station of that [culture] in southern Illinois.[11]
THE HOPEWELLIAN [CIVILIZATION][12] (500 B.C.-500 A.D.)
Toward the end of the Initial [Woodland] [period] maize or corn, as we call it today, was introduced into northern Illinois, presumably from Mexico and Middle America through the agency of intervening tribes. In an apparently short time, its production seems to have been greatly intensified and exploited. Other food crops and tobacco may have accompanied maize.
About the same time, a [formalized religion] arose, probably concerned with the worship of deities who personified natural forces like the sun, rain and thunder, which were important to a plant-growing [people]. From the evidence of burial places, there seem to have been two or possibly three social classes. Doubtless the first comprised the families who introduced and grew the new food plants and who were inspired to invent the complex [religion]. The burial of the dead, especially those socially important and of the highest class, was accompanied by elaborate and colorful ceremonies closely bound to the religion. This seems to be a continuation in grander form of the earlier Red Ochre funeral and burial. It is unfortunate that we do not have tangible evidence of their other religious and political ceremonies which may have been even more impressive and significant. The official dress and [insignia] of the officials, which we can barely glimpse in the rich and varied remains in the tombs, signify a political system of social control and an established priesthood for the spiritual guidance of the community. Shamans or medicine men probably had only the duty of treating disease. Reverence for and possibly worship of ancestors is suggested by the impressive tomb chambers and mounds and the care obviously bestowed on certain of their socially prominent dead.
Social and political prestige, religious pomp and ceremonial, all seem to have combined to stimulate a demand for rare materials, beautiful jewels and impressive regalia. This initiated the search for pearls at home, the development of skillful and artistic workmanship in [flint], bone, shell, copper and mica, travel abroad and trade in materials obtainable only in distant regions.
Aside from those technologies connected with the growing of plant foods, probably few new crafts appeared in the [culture]; rather those already, existing in the Initial [Woodland] were raised to a high degree of excellence. [Art] in several forms flourished—carving in the round and in relief, the making of fine symmetrical polished, decorated and painted pottery commonly called typical Hopewellian, hammered copper [jewelry], the setting of pearls and highly-colored native stones as eyes in sculptured animals and in bear-tooth pendants and ear ornaments, etching of delicate designs, naturalistic and conventional, on bone and the modeling and firing of exquisite statuettes in clay. We admire and wonder at the excellence of execution in the best of their small sculpture because they are skillfully fashioned and finished and because they so accurately portray the characteristics and habits of animals with which we are familiar. The artist had the crudest of tools to aid him—[rough stone] hammers and an anvil for [pecking] [stone] to the general form; sandstone files or abraders; clay and water to polish pieces; [flint] and tubular drills for boring; and flint knives to cut and engrave pottery and bone—in spite of which the best craftsmen well knew how to bring out the beauty of the piece.