ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the labor system responsible for building the Serpent Mound and the socio-political implications for Early and Middle Woodland societies over time. Serpent Mound and the surrounding area are in an unglaciated portion of southern Ohio. Frederic Putnam conducted the most extensive excavations to date at Serpent Mound in the late 1880s and facilitated the preservation of the site into what has become Serpent Mound State Memorial. The first settled hamlet communities in the Ohio Valley were composed of relatively few people – perhaps 2 or 3 families representing 12 or so people. If each hamlet within the larger regional community provided four people to the labor force, then some 65 hamlets participated in the construction of Serpent Mound. The Middle Woodland mound-builders seem to have been able to complete these massive earthwork constructions by both increasing the amount of time spent on the construction and increasing the area from which to draw the labor pool.
