208 BULLETIN 18 3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



extant data on the Hopewell horizon adequately characterize all as- 

 pects of this important culture. As has been pointed out repeatedly 

 in course of this discussion, investigations on the Hopewell to date 

 have been concerned almost exclusively with the spectacular burial 

 complex to the neglect of the ordinary and commonplace items of 

 every day use. It seems a little strange that after nearly a century 

 of exploration in the upper Mississippi-Ohio drainage area no one 

 has yet presented concrete data as to the subsistence pattern, house 

 types, or village complex of the people responsible for the richly 

 furnished tumuli of the Hopewell horizon. Until these overlong 

 neglected aspects of the problem are adequately illuminated, one must 

 continue to wonder if the wide dissimilarity between Hopewell and 

 Port Ancient, for example, actually exists, or whether it is due in 

 large part to the fact that an elaborate burial cult has been compared 

 to a village complex whose mortuary practices were much less 

 developed. 



With respect to the problem at hand it is impossible to say at 

 the moment in how far the supposedly non-Hopewellian features at 

 Henner are truly foreign to the Hopewell horizon in the Ohio and 

 Illinois Valleys and to what extent they represent merely undiscov- 

 ered elements whose presence in Hopewell village sites farther east 

 may yet be established by future excavations. Identity between sites 

 as remote from one another geographically as those in Ohio and Mis- 

 souri is hardly expectable, and the burial complex in the west cer- 

 tainly bears little resemblance to that in Ohio. New contacts and 

 environmental differences undoubtedly resulted in the elimination of 

 old traits and the adoption of new ones by the peripheral groups that 

 settled at the Renner site and elsewhere along the Missouri. It is 

 quite possible that the sites in the vicinity of Kansas City were flour- 

 ishing later than those in Illinois and Ohio, perhaps at a time when 

 the occupants were, or their predecessors had been, in contact with 

 later groups affiliated with a Middle Mississippi horizon. I suspect 

 that when more extended work is carried out on additional sites in 

 Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Missouri it will be found that many 

 more similarities obtain than are now apparent. Meanwhile, the 

 Renner complex can perhaps best be regarded as a marginal mani- 

 festation, basically of Hopewellian derivation, with an overlay of 

 elements which though they suggest Mississippi influences cannot in 

 all cases be certainly proved to be non-Hopewellian. 



THE STEED-KISKER SITS 



The Steed-Kisker site, although represented by a comparatively 

 limited amount of material, pretty certainly aligns itself with sites 

 to the east and northeast that have been assigned to the so-called 

 Middle Mississippi phase. Phillips has recently (1940) summarized 



