By 1945 Webb, distancing himself from his Ohio Valley colleagues, had put the essential Adena site types firmly in place. While the final result was a product of Depression-relief archaeology, it was Webb's prodigious and unmatched capacity to analyze and publish its results that paid off. The elements have changed somewhat "in the subsequent telling," but it is remarkable how durable Webb's interpretations have been, despite their ambiguities. These elements were the mounds, the circular paired post structures he identified below the mounds, "ceremonial circle" earth works, and finally, large ditched Adena villages. All are what I would call ritual sites or ritual elements of the settlement system.
Rarely has one archaeologist provided so definitive a characterization of an eastern United States archaeological culture. However fatally flawed it may have been because it nowhere considered domestic contexts, his characterization established a series of structure types which have tended to lead lives of their own. By their size and complexity they have suggested a rich and varied ritual life focused on death and burial with deceptively complex social implications. In hindsight, and in ways Webb never imagined, we can demonstrate that they interacted with each other in a distinctive manner to form which might be called the Adena ritual landscape. Finally, this landscape may be less the unique than an expression of the times, the place, and a certain level of cultural development.