VARIATION INOHIO HOPEWELL POLITICAL ECONOMIES Matthew S. Coon / examine mortuary, artifactual, symbolic, and proxemic data from Hopewell sites in southwestern and south-central Ohio to suggest that people associated with south-central Ohio sites such as Hopewell and Seip implemented more exclusionary political strategies, while people at southwestern sites such as Turner and Fort Ancient maintained a more corporate ori entation through much of the Middle Woodland period. The recognition of this dimension of variation among Ohio Hopewell peoples has important implications for the study of the evolution of middle-range societies. Por medio del andlisis de multiples lineas de evidencia encontrados en sitios de Hopewell al sudoeste y al surcentral de Ohio, propongo que los habitantes de sitos como Hopewell y Seip utilizaban estrategias politicas exclusionarias mientras que los habitantes de sitos tales como Turnery Fort Ancient mantuvieron una estrategia politica corporativa durante la mayor parte del periodo Middle Woodland. El reconocimiento de esta variacion entre los antiguos habitantes de Hopewell en Ohio tiene implicaciones importantes para el estudio de la evolucion de estas sociedades de medio rango. The long-standing recognition thatOhio Hopewell differs markedly from other Hopewellian areaswith respect to the inten sity of long-distance interaction, acquisition of exotic materials, production of craft items, and architectural design and construction of ceremonial centers resulted in a historical tendency to treat all manifestations of Hopewell in Ohio as one cultural unit, generally in distinction from other regional Hopewellian manifestations. Variation among Hopewell groups in Ohio with respect to ceramic production (Hawkins 1996; Pickard 1996), stone tool production (Harkness 1982), copper ear spool production (Ruhl 1992, 2006), settlement patterns (Pacheco 1996), and thedistributionand architec tural forms of ceremonial centers (Byers 2004; DeBoer 1997) suggests thatthecultural landscape was far from uniform, and researchers are increas ingly focusing upon these intra-regional differ ences. In this spirit, I examine several prominent Ohio Hopewell sites fromsouth-central and south western Ohio from the interpretive standpoint of the Dual-Processual model of political economy. The Dual-Processual Model: Exclusionary and Corporate Strategies The Dual-Processual model of political economy, as suggestedby Richard Blanton and his colleagues Gary Feinman, Steven Kowalewski, and PeterPere grine (e.g., Blanton 1998; Blanton et al. 1996a; Feinman 2000; Feinman et al. 2000; Peregrine 2001), recognizes that social and cultural systems are influenced by the outcomes of competition and compromise among human actors with diverse (and often conflicting) political agendas. This model is based in part upon the observation that there are different power strategies and varying sources of power that are commonly utilized by political actors.These power strategies can be grouped into two main categories, exclusionary and corporate. In exclusionary power strategies, individuals attempt to develop "a political system built around their monopoly controlof sources of power" (Blan ton et al. 1996a:2). In a network form of exclu sionary power strategy,political actors vie for preeminence by establishing ties or contacts with Matthew S. Coon Indiana Department of Transportation, Office of Environmental Services, Cultural Resources Section, Indianapolis, IN 46204 American Antiquity 74(1), 2009, pp. 49-76 Copyright ?2009 by the Society forAmerican Archaeology 49