Study of pipestone artifacts overturns a century-old assumption

The Hopewell people used distinctive stone  pipes, often with effigies on them,
The Hopewell people used distinctive stone pipes, often with effigies on them, like this owl pipe found in an early village excavation in Illinois. Watch a slide show to see more pipes.
CHAMPAIGN, lll. In the early 1900s, an archaeologist, William Mills, dug up a treasure-trove of carved stone pipes that had been buried almost 2,000 years earlier. Mills was the first to dig the Native American site, called Tremper Mound, in southern Ohio. And when he inspected the pipes, he made a reasonable - but untested - assumption. The pipes looked as if they had been carved from local stone, and so he said they were. That assumption, first published in 1916, has been repeated in scientific publications to this day. But according to a new analysis, Mills was wrong.
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