Dr. Brad Lepper

Ohio History Connection's Archaeology Blog

Research Interests

• Pre-contact archaeology
• Hopewell archaeology
• History of North American archaeology

Education

• MA and PhD., The Ohio State University
• BA, University of New Mexico

Dr. Lepper earned his BA degree from the University of New Mexico and his MA and PhD degrees from The Ohio State University. His primary areas of interest include the Ice Age peoples of North America, Ohio's magnificent mounds and earthworks, and the history of North American archaeology. Dr. Lepper has written extensively on these subjects for both technical journals and magazines intended for a general audience. He is the author of the book, Ohio Archaeology: an illustrated chronicle of Ohio's ancient American Indian cultures, published in 2005 by Orange Frazer Press. He also writes a monthly column on archaeology for the Columbus Dispatch.

Dr. Lepper was born and raised in northeastern Ohio, and now lives in Newark, in the vicinity of the extensive ancient earthworks of that region, with his wife Karen, two children, one dog, and four cats.

Dr. Lepper has been visiting professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Denison University in Granville and the Department of Anthropology at The Ohio State University at Newark.

Research

Especially noteworthy research includes the excavation of the Burning Tree mastodon in December of 1989 (named one of the top 50 science discoveries of 1990 by Discover magazine in their January 1991 issue) and the discovery of the Great Hopewell Road, first reported in 1995 (see Archaeology magazine, November/December 1995). Dr. Lepper's research on the Great Hopewell Road was featured in the public television documentary Searching for the Great Hopewell Road first broadcast in April of 1998.

• "Drums along the Scioto: interpreting Hopewell material culture through the lens of contemporary American Indian ceremonial practices." Archaeologies 14(1):62-84.
  • Barnes, Benjamin J. and Bradley T. Lepper. 2018.
• The Fertile Earth and the Ordered Cosmos: Reflections on the Newark Earthworks and World Heritage. edited by Elizabeth Weiser, Timothy Jordan, and Richard Shiels. The Ohio State University Press, June 2023.
  • "Hard to Describe but Awesome to Experience"
  • "The Rest of the Story"
  • "The Newark Earthworks Have Integrity"
  • "The Newark Earthworks Have Outstanding Universal Value"
  • "The Fort Ancient Earthworks: Similar but Different"
  • "How the Great Hopewell Road Connected Newark with Chillicothe"
• "The Newark Earthworks: monumental geometry and astronomy at a Hopewellian pilgrimage center."  In Hero, Hawk and Open Hand: American Indian art of the ancient Midwest and South,
  • edited by Richard V. Townsend and Robert V. Sharp, pp. 72-81. The Art Institute of Chicago and Yale University Press, New Haven. 2004.
• Ohio Archaeology: an illustrated chronicle of Ohio's ancient American Indian cultures.  Orange Frazer Press, Wilmington, Ohio. 2005.
• "Archaeology of the Hopewell culture." In Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology,
  • edited by Claire Smith, pp. 3483-3488. Springer, New York. 2014.
• "The Newark Earthworks: a monumental engine of world renewal." In The Newark Earthworks: enduring monuments, contested meanings, edited by Lindsay Jones and
  • Richard D. Shiels, pp. 41-61. University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville. 2016.
• "Insights into Hopewell material culture derived from the contemporary ceremonial practices of the Shawnee Tribe: a case study supporting the value of collaborative research with Native American tribes." 
  • Current Research in Ohio Archaeology 2018.
• "Newark Earthworks." Sidebar in The Archaeology of Native North America, second edition, by Dean R. Snow, Nancy Gonlin, and Peter E. Siegel, pp. 109-110. Routledge, New York. 2020.
• Evidence for the use of Hopewell ceramic vessels as water drums: the previously unpublished research of Richard Zurel. 
  • Current Research in Ohio Archaeology 2019, Lepper, Bradley T. and Chief Benjamin J. Barnes.
• "Ohio's Serpent Mound-an American Indian Story Written in the Earth" [external link].
  • Chief Ben Barnes and Dr. Bradley Lepper, Richland Source, June 7, 2021.

Awards

• Society for American Archaeology, Public Audience Book Award, 2007, for Ohio Archaeology: an illustrated chronicle of Ohio's ancient American Indian cultures, published by Orange Frazer Press.

• Ohio Archaeological Council, Public Awareness Award, 2008