Fort Ancient

Fort Ancient is a name for a Native American culture that flourished from 1000-1750 CE among a people who predominantly inhabited land along the Ohio River in areas of modern-day southern Ohio, northern Kentucky, southeastern Indiana and western West Virginia. They were a maize-based agricultural society who lived in sedentary villages and built ceremonial platform mounds. The Fort Ancient culture was once thought to have been an expansion of the Mississippian cultures. It is now accepted as an independently developed culture that descended from the Hopewell culture (100 BCE–500 CE). The Fort Ancient Culture's most famous mound is called the serpent mound.

The name of the culture originates from the Fort Ancient, Ohio archeological site. However, the Fort Ancient Site is now thought to have been built by Ohio Hopewellian people. It was likely occupied later by the succeeding Fort Ancient culture. The site is located on a hill above the Little Miami River, close to Lebanon, Ohio. Despite its name, most archaeologists do not believe that Fort Ancient was used primarily as a fortress by either the Ohio Hopewell culture or the Fort Ancient culture; it was more likely to have been a ceremonial location.

Starting in about 1000 CE, terminal Late Woodland groups in the Middle Ohio Valley adopted maize agriculture. They began settling in small, year-round nuclear family households and settlements of no more than 40 to 50 individuals. These small scattered settlements, located along terraces that overlooked rivers and sometimes on flood plains, would be occupied for short periods before the groups moved on to new locations.

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