This article offers insights into the organization of Scioto Hopewell craft production and examines the implications of this organization through the lens of ritual economy. We present a novel analysis of investigations at the North 40 site, concluding that it is a craft production site located on the outskirts of the renowned Mound City Group. High-resolution landscape-scale magnetic survey revealed a cluster of three large structures and two rows of associated pits; one of the buildings and three of the pits were sampled in excavations. Evidence from the North 40 site marks this as the best-documented Scioto Hopewell craft production site. Mica, chert, and copper were crafted here in contexts organized outside the realm of domestic household production and consumption. Other material remains from the site suggest that crafting was specialized and embedded in ceremonial contexts. This analysis of the complex organization of Scioto Hopewell craft production provides grounds for further understanding the elaborate ceremonialism practiced by Middle Woodland (AD 1–400) societies and adds to the known complexity of craft production in small-scale societies. Furthermore, this article contributes to a growing body of literature demonstrating the utility of ritual economy as a framework for approaching the sociality of small-scale societies.

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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.

This article presents a reconstruction and analysis of the Caldwell Mound located in the central Scioto River valley of southern Ohio. The mound contained a log tomb, at least four burials, and associated funerary objects. Four AMS radiocarbon dates place the Caldwell Mound within the last century BC and first century AD, and the mound contains evidence of practices historically associated with “Adena” and “Hopewell.” Few other records exist from this period in the region despite it experiencing perhaps some of the most dramatic socioreligious transformations in precolumbian North America. This analysis documents early evidence for the diversification and segregation of leadership roles based on the interpretation of three buried individuals. It also demonstrates the utility and efficacy of working with amateur-produced records and collections, even when incomplete, to reconstruct and glean insight from important Woodland period sites.