The evidence for playing of athletic games in Hopewellian is very late and scanty. The only tangible indication are the rings, “pulleys” and a stone discoidal found with a skeleton in the Rutherford Mound. (See M. L. Fowler, _The Rutherford Mound_, Scientific Papers Series, Vol. VII, No. 1, Springfield, Ill. 1957, pp. 31-33). The rings of pottery and of cannel coal (or jet) seem too fragile for actual playing pieces and may rather be trophies or prizes, replicas of similar pieces made of wood. Such wooden pieces may have been used in games throughout middle and late Hopewellian times. [Illustration: Fig. 29. (Photographs by Irvin Peithmann.)] [Illustration: View of a stream-side flint mine and workshop (in field alongside) near Cobden, Illinois.] [Illustration: Close-up showing spherical or “ball-flint” nodules from stream banks similar to those worked up by Middle Mississippians and others in adjacent workshop.] The bow and arrow, at least, seems to be a decided improvement over the spear. It constituted a repeating weapon. Ammunition could be carried in the belt or on the back in a quiver without unduly hampering the bowman. On the other hand, it was useless in hand-to-hand fighting and a spear or dagger was needed to supplement it. Moreover, the spear with a thrower was a more accurate weapon than the bow, unless the arrows were carefully made and balanced. The bow never seems to have wholly replaced the spear which continued to be a favorite weapon down into the European contact period. The improvements that distinguish the Mississippians above the Hopewellians may be more apparent than real in the first two instances and, in the third, may represent a significant rather than a fundamental advance. Looking at the two periods from the broader cultural viewpoint, they appear to have many cultural features in common. The Middle Mississippians probably added new food and fibre plants to those of earlier periods, and perhaps increased production by improved, more intensive methods of cultivation. Their staple crops like those of the Hopewellians were corn, beans and tobacco. The technologies or methods of making the necessary tools in the two cultures varied but little. Art was revived or rather re-developed in the Mississippian period but fewer media are employed. In artistic skill, imagination and productiveness perhaps the Hopewellians had an edge on the later people. Trade and travel, though resumed to distant sections of the continent, does not appear so widespread or general as in the Hopewellian period. A formalized religion with colorful ceremonies seems to have revitalized the life of the people but possibly no more effectively than in the earlier period. There was no significant improvement in labor, power or transportation; all were still accomplished wholly by human effort without the aid of draft animals. Traveling by boat was known and probably used by both cultures.