A Travel Network for Prehistoric Land and Water Navigation

The Hopewell culture created numerous earthworks across the landscape of Southern Ohio and Illinois between 200 BC and 400 AD. Archaeologists believe these earthworks to have been important fixtures in the Hopewell social landscape. Unfortunately, 19th and 20th century agricultural activity destroyed a large majority of the structures. Archaeologists possess little contextual data from these activities except for brief descriptions and locations provided by early settlers. This project leverages the spatial data that remain with a set of Network Analyst tools to model prehistoric human temporal costs for both land and water navigation. This project permits archaeologists to test theories about social interaction between Hopewell earthwork centers and helps researchers gain insight into the purpose of the earthworks and the communities they organized