Qualla: Wolf Plains Earthworks

Wolf Plains Earthworks: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jaknouse, CC BY-SA 3.0. Thirty earthworks. Twenty-two conical burial mounds. Nine circular ditched enclosures. All built between roughly 200 BC and AD 100 by the people archaeologists call the Adena culture, on a flat glacial terrace just north of where Athens, Ohio, now stands. The terrace was itself an accident of the last Ice Age: glacial outwash flowing down the Hocking River got dammed at this point, the river found a new outlet to the northeast, and a wide flat shelf of fine sediment was left behind in country that is otherwise sharp ridges and tight hollows. The Adena built the densest concentration of mounds in southeastern Ohio on this terrace - a sacred landscape so concentrated that nineteenth-century surveyors had trouble drawing it all in. The town that grew up on the terrace later took its name from the geography. It is called, simply, The Plains.

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Image: Jaknouse | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wolf Plains Earthworks: Squier and Davis Drew It Wrong

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The earliest published documentation of the Wolf Plains group appeared in Ephraim George Squier and Edwin Hamilton Davis's 1848 Smithsonian publication Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley - the first scientific archaeological monograph ever published in the United States,...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Wolf Plains Earthworks: What the Adena Built and Why

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jaknouse, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Adena culture flourished in the Ohio Valley roughly from 1000 BC to AD 200. They were among the earliest American peoples to build substantial earthworks at scale: conical mounds that covered burials of important individuals, and circular ditched enclosures that probably serv...

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Image: Jaknouse | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wolf Plains Earthworks: What Has Been Lost

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jaknouse, CC BY-SA 3.0. When the Wolf Plains group was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 31, 1974, only 25 of the original 30 earthworks remained intact enough to count as contributing properties. The losses came from the same causes that destroyed mounds across the Ohio Valley: n...

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Image: Jaknouse | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wolf Plains Earthworks: A Sacred Landscape in a Suburban Town

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jaknouse, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Plains, Ohio, today is a small unincorporated community of about 3,100 people, just north of Athens off State Route 33. The town's residential streets and businesses sit on the same flat terrace the Adena chose. Many residents have a mound in or near their backyard. The Plain...

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Image: Jaknouse | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wolf Plains Earthworks: Flying Over the Flat Terrace

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jaknouse, CC BY-SA 3.0. From the air, the Plains terrace is a noticeably flat green-and-residential area surrounded by sharp wooded ridges - a geological anomaly visible at a glance against the rolling Allegheny Plateau context. The Hocking River curves past the southern edge before swinging east toward...

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Image: Jaknouse | CC BY-SA 3.0