Some suggest that much of Hopewell ritual consisted of heroic-style feasts and contests: races, games and gambling, which – if at all like later Feasts of the Dead in the American Northeast – often ended by covering great treasures beneath carefully layered strata of soil and gravel, so that nobody (except, perhaps, gods or spirits) would ever see them again.22 Both the games and burials would, obviously, tend to militate against the accumulation of wealth – or, better put, would ensure that social differences remained largely theatrical.
