International Brown Bag Lecture
Dr. Laura Murphy, associate professor of sociology/anthropology, will present "More than Pipes: Reflections on the Hopewell Culture Collections at the British Museum."
The Indigeneous Hopewell Culture flourished in the Middle Ohio River Valley between 2,000 and 1,800 years ago, leaving behind a remarkable archaeological record of monumental earthworks, burial mounds, and highly-crafted ceremonial objects made from continent-wide exotic materials. At the September 2023 UNESCO World Heritage Convention, eight Hopewell ceremonial sites were inscribed as the "Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks," thus peaking global interest in the Hopewell culture. The increasing global awareness has demanded renewed investigation into the impacts of the colonial antiquities trade of Hopewell sacred objects. Most famously, a collection of nearly 1,000 Hopewell objects, including over 200 effigy pipes from a burial context, were sold in 1864 by Edwin Davis, an amateur archaeologist from Ohio, to William Blackmore, a lawyer in England, for $10,000. In 1931, this collection was sold to the British Museum where a few dozen of these artifacts are on display in the North American gallery. For the remaining Hopewell artifacts in storage at an off-site facility in London, there is little information and no photographs of the complete collection that are accessible to descendant communities. This presentation will include recent work behind the scenes in the British Museum collections facility, will highlight future research and collaboration, and will bring awareness and understanding of Native North American sacred items stored overseas - far from their places of origin.
