Sterling Rock Falls Historical Society program focuses on Hopewell civilization

STERLING – The Sterling Rock Falls Historical Society is hosting a presentation about the Hopewell civilization at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 11, at 607 E. Third St., Sterling.

The Hopewell mounds in Sterling’s Sinnissippi Park and those at the Albany Mounds State Historic Site are a testament to an earlier, highly developed society that inhabited the area more than 2,000 years ago and left more than 7,700 known sites of its activities throughout Illinois.

Centered in south-central Ohio, the Hopewell civilization built elaborate earthworks and thousands of burial mounds throughout the river valleys of the Midwest. They established trading routes for copper and silver from northern Michigan, seashells from Florida and chert and obsidian as far north and west as the Athabasca region of Canada.

In northwestern Illinois, they established several large settlements and found a preferred pipestone deposit, which they mined. Recent data shows that 80% of stone objects found in one of southeastern Ohio’s most prominent Hopewell mounds were made from Sterling-area stone; manufactured goods from this region were distributed over long distances throughout the Hopewell trading sphere, making northwestern Illinois an important center for manufacturing and commerce 2,000 years ago. In 2022, the most prominent Hopewell ceremonial sites in southeastern Ohio were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

This presentation will trace the development of a thriving ancient civilization in northwestern Illinois, review the significance of local area mound sites and the development of local pipestone mining, utilization and trading.

This free event features Dr. Wolf Koch and his studies about the Hopewell civilization in the Sauk Valley.

Koch and his wife, Linnea, have been studying accounts of Adena and Hopewell archaeological research and have traveled to many mound builder sites in Ohio and Illinois. Koch is a Sterling resident and a consultant to the oil and petrochemical industry who has been a professor of chemical engineering. Linnea, a graphic designer and photographer, produced three interpretive panels for Sterling’s Sinnissippi Park in 2008, describing the history of the Hopewell civilization, the significance of the local mounds and settlements, local mining, manufacturing and trading of pipestone products.

In 2009, the Kochs completed a booklet on the Hopewell civilization in the Rock River Valley for use as a resource in teaching local history.