Christopher Carr

Christopher Carr is an archaeologist with primary interest in the prehistory of eastern North America, especially the social organizations and religious rituals and knowledge of tribal peoples of the Midwest from about 1000 B.C. to Contact. To reconstruct these aspects of their lives, he focuses on their mortuary practices and art. His research makes strong use of the ethnohistorical records of Woodland and Plains Native Americans, as well as anthropological theories about the causes of development of tribal and rank social organizations from prior social forms. It also has involved the development of archaeological theory about how mortuary practices and artistic style reflect social and political structures and processes.

Within this range of subjects, Carr's work over the past two decade has aimed particularly at revealing the nature of Hopewell societies, rituals, and religious concepts in the Ohio area, between 50 B.C. and A.D. 350. He and a team of colleagues have made very fine-grained descriptions of the social and religious lives of Hopewell peoples, which are published in his coauthored books, Gathering Hopewell (2005) and The Scioto Hopewell and Their Neighbors (2008).  His most recent work focuses on Ohio Hopewellian peoples' notions of personhood and on the plots and functions of the ritual dramas that they performed within their ceremonial centers.  These studies are published in Being Scioto Hopewell (2021).

Carr works extensively with the analytical technologies of material science in studying the art and artifacts of Hopewellian peoples in order to infer their social and religious lives.  He has played a leading role in adapting some technologies to archaeology. The techniques and materials include electron microprobe, X-radiography, petrography and AMS carbon dating of ceramics; EDX spectrometry, microprobe, and Raman microspectrometry of metals and pigments; and color and infrared digital imaging and image enhancement of art works. He has spent considerable time restoring the details of portraits of Hopewell leaders and images of creatures that Hopewell artists patinated on copper artifacts.

Web site:  http://www.christophercarrarchaeology.com