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A finely executed early rendering of the monumental geometric enclosures along the Little Miami River in southern Ohio, illustrating the ceremonial earthwork complexes now understood to be associated with the Hopewell culture (ca. 100 BCE–400 CE). The principal plan shows a concentration of circular, square, and polygonal embankments situated on a high terrace above the river, joined by raised linear avenues and causeways. A separate inset at upper right offers a more intricate complex on a nearby tributary, likely derived from early American surveys. Relief is conveyed through hachure and stipple shading, with both English and metric scales.
The image reflects European interest in the monumental antiquities of the American interior and was prepared for inclusion in David Baillie Warden’s Recherches sur les antiquités des États-Unis de l’Amérique septentrionale, published in Paris in 1825. Warden, an American diplomat resident in France and an active member of the Société de Géographie, compiled this material primarily from the 1820 work of Caleb Atwater and other correspondents. His essay and its accompanying suite of seven engraved plates represent one of the earliest sustained attempts to bring North America’s pre-Columbian ceremonial architecture to the attention of a European audience.
Issued as plate XI in volume II of the Recueil de Voyages et de Mémoires, this engraving predates the formal archaeological surveys of Squier and Davis by more than two decades and remains one of the first widely circulated visual documents of the Ohio earthworks outside the United States.
