The Hammock Papers: Lepper

Showing posts with label Lepper. Show all posts

22 April 2026

18 January 2025

21 September 2024

The Ohio History Connection has announced that the Octagon Earthworks in Newark will be open for full public access starting January 1, 2025. This monumental decision comes after a successful settlement with the Moundbuilders Country Club, which has held a lease on the property since 1910.

More HERE.

Archaeologist, Dr. Brad Lepper, describes the Octagon Mound. His lecture on the Newark Earthworks complex is masterful.

09 May 2023

Somewhere.

Dr. Brad Lepper discusses the cosmopolitan culture of the Hopewell Mound groups ...

In a paper published in the current issue of the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, avocational archaeologist George Colvin and American Museum of Natural History paleontologist Neil Landman consider “one of the lesser known but more unusual and exotic items recovered from the Hopewell Site.”

The item in question is a culturally modified fragment of an ammonite fossil. Ammonite fossils are the mineralized spiral shells of squid-like critters that went extinct at the same time as most of the dinosaurs — about 66 million years ago.

Ohio’s rocks are all much older, so this fossil must have come from somewhere else. According to Colvin and Landman, it came from the Badlands of southwestern South Dakota.

16 April 2023

Earthworks.

Dr. Brad Lepper, Senior Archaeologist for the Ohio History Connection’s World Heritage program, on the missing links to the Newark Earthworks' history ...

In 1775, Nicholas Cresswell encountered such a ceremonial leader while visiting the Delaware Indians of Coshocton. He wrote: “Saw an Indian Conjuror dressed in a Coat of Bearskin with a Visor mask made of wood, frightful enough to scare the Devil.”

Don't miss Dr. Lepper's fascinating explanation of the geographical-geometry of Ohio's prehistoric earthworks ...

25 May 2020

Largest.

Archeologist Dr. Brad Lepper gives a tour of the Newark Earthworks, which are the largest set of geometric earthworks found anywhere in the world. His presentation shows how the Hopewell people created and used the pre-historic mound structure and how some of it was preserved.

CONNECT

13 March 2018

Excellent.

Excellent books ...

01 March 2018

Shaman.

The Hopewell Shaman of Newark, also known as the Wray figurine, is a small stone sculpture representing a shaman, or spiritual leader, of the Hopewell culture (100 B.C. to A.D. 500). It was discovered in 1881 at the base of the largest burial mound at the Newark Earthworks.

It is a unique naturalistic carving of a man, or woman, wearing bear regalia, including a bear's head and paws. The shaman's left hand is holding the bear's head as if caught in the act of lowering the mask over his face to complete his transformation into a bear spirit. In many tribal societies, the shaman served as a combination of priest, rabbi, and healer. The shaman was believed to be able to bring rain for the crops or aid hunters in locating game animals.

Nicholas Cresswell, while visiting the Delaware Indians of Coshocton in 1775, witnessed a similar figure in person. He wrote:

"Saw an Indian Conjuror dressed in a Coat of Bearskin with a Visor mask made of wood, frightful enough to scare the Devil."

CONNECT

Dr. Brad Lepper further explains the Shaman of Newark ... HERE.

Dr. Lepper's fascinating talk, Newark Earthworks: Wonder of the Ancient World ...

Jim Harrison on "giving voice to the bear" (at the 31:17 mark of this interview) ... HERE.

28 July 2015

Newark.

Dr. Bradley T. Lepper, Curator of Archaeology from the Ohio Historical Society, details the historic Newark Earthworks and why it should become a World Heritage Site.

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL