The Great Hopewell Road: A Biased Assessment Thirty Years On
Bradley T. Lepper
Abstract
The Great Hopewell Road was a parallel-walled avenue of remarkable straightness that began at Newark’s Octagon Earthworks, and which I proposed originally extended as far south as Chillicothe. Based on various lines of evidence, I further argued that it served as a pilgrims’ road linking the Newark Earthworks and the cluster of roughly contemporary earthworks in the Scioto Valley. This proposal generated a great deal of scholarly and public interest, and the Great Hopewell Road was a component of the justification for the Outstanding Universal Value of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks World Heritage Site. This review examines the varied responses of the scholarly community to this proposal and assesses the evidence and arguments for the road and its proposed purpose. It also considers possible explanations for why the proposal has attracted so much public and media attention.
Representativeness, Occupations, and Information: Critical Considerations on the Evaluation of Archaeological Significance in CRM
Evan Peacock and Kevin C. Nolan
Abstract
The purpose of historic preservation policy is to ensure that data about the past are preserved for future generations of researchers, and—where possible—significant material and places are preserved for the benefit of the general public. Cultural Resource Management (CRM) has developed as an industry to address these requirements. Standard, cookie-cutter practices have become an easy-to-implement, but often inadequate, solution for this primary purpose. We examine the deficiencies in CRM practice in concept and execution. Notably, most recommendations for insignificance—and sometimes for significance—are made without justification in terms of the regulations that structure the investment of public monies in historic preservation. A different conceptual approach is needed to ensure that there is a future for archaeological research derived from CRM. Archaeologists must move away from the “National Geographic” principle as a primary justification for “significance.” For there to be a science of the past in the future, we must implement a standard of representativeness in what types of data are preserved. Further, the concept of “site” should be replaced with evaluations of “occupations” as features in-and-of-themselves. Finally, CRM needs a rigorous definition of “Information” in order to adequately implement justifications of significance under NRHP criterion D. It is impossible to rigorously evaluate “information potential” without a definition of “information.” Operationalization of representativeness—necessary for a science of the past—may be realized by adoption of Shannon Entropy as a measure of information potential. An occupation that is highly redundant with previously investigated sites may be significant, but it is not significant due to its potential to provide information about the past.
Keywords: Section 106; Criterion D; Shannon Entropy; Conditional Entropy; Significance
