I like to go places that make me feel small.

Mark and I had actually been to Mound City (Hopewell Culture National Historical Park) before, but somehow I didn't manage to make a post about it. Probably because we were just passing through, on a road trip deadline. This time, we made a day of it and spent two edifying hours on the site.

A new and improved interpretative movie helped me understand the site much better than I had the last time around. Apparently, during the Hopewell period (200 BC to 500 AD), there were no cities in the region. People lived as family units, with three dwellings the most that have ever been found in one place.

There was no big political structure either, and everyone hunted or gardened for their own food. And yet, despite all this, the Hopewell people were able to create artworks rivalling those produced by societies with a designated artisan class.

They also brought in goods from very far afield, perhaps via ceremonial journeys rather than through trade. The mica from North Carolina particularly inspired me because I could see how the reflective surface might tie into the various Hopewell sites' Stonehenge-like obsession with astronomy and the sky.

"These walled complexes were likely the gathering places of people who wanted to form community even though they were not living together in villages," one brochure read. Sounds a lot like a homesteading blog, doesn't it? Perhaps that's why these massive earthworks fire my imagination and send me plotting out more visits to other sites in the near future.