John Hanson Mitchell (born 1940) is an American author best known for a series of books that concentrate on a single square mile of land in eastern Massachusetts known as Scratch Flat.
Mitchell’s first book, Ceremonial Time: Fifteen Thousand Years on One Square Mile, was published in 1984 and went on to become something of a cult classic, thanks partly to his inclusion of Native American history in the narrative.
Other books deal with travel and gardens, and a memoir, The Rose Café, the story of Mitchell's sojourn working in Corsica as a young man during the Algerian War.
Mitchell received a number of awards for the body of his work, including travel grants, and an honorary doctorate from Fitchburg State University.
Six books based on the square mile of land featured in Ceremonial Time have been republished by the University of New England Press, collected together as The Scratch Flat Chronicles.