Download citation the ohio hopewell episode paradigm lost and paradigm gained there is a general consensus among the north american archaeologists specializing in the middle woodland period . It argues that the ohio hopewell episode can be better and more coherently characterized by treating it as a complex social system based on dual and mutually autonomous social networks of clan alliances and world renewal cults and that this dual clan cult social system was in fact the culmination of such social systems that were widely dispersed across the eastern woodlands the cults were devoted to treating their deceased members and or dependants as sacrificial offerings to enhance the . Ohio hopewell episode byers presents a new interpretive reconstruction of the culture of the prehistoric native american groups who were responsible for these monuments basing his interpretation on a careful analysis and classification of the monumental archaeological record he lays out an empirically and theoretically well grounded and broad based symbolic ecological reconstruction of the way of life of the responsible peoples. There is a general consensus among the north american archaeologists specializing in the middle woodland period ca 100bc to ca ad 400 that the ohio hopewell was a rather straight forward complex of small scaled peer polity communities based on simple gardening and extensive foraging practices and occupying dispersed habitation locales loosely clustered around major earthworks. Stanford libraries official online search tool for books media journals databases government documents and more