Whittlesey culture is an archaeological designation for a Native American people, who lived in northeastern Ohio during the Late Precontact and Early Contact period between A.D. 1000 to 1640.

The Whittlesey culture people created a distinctive style of pottery and built defensive villages, set high on promontories with steep cliffs and surrounded by ditches or stockades.

About 1640, Whittlesey villages were abandoned and due to the displacement of Native groups during the early contact period with Europeans, it is not known where or how they relocated.

[1] South Park Village, a Whittlesey culture site in Cuyahoga County, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

[2] A historic marker about the Whittlesey people is located on Seeley Road in LeRoy Township, Lake County, Ohio.

[3][4] The culture is named for Charles Whittlesey, an archaeologist and geologist who was the founder of the Western Reserve Historical Society.

Their villages were surrounded by ditches or palisades and were located near the Lake Erie coast or on plateaus in river valleys.

[6] The culture's final phase, beginning about 1500, shows that people no longer ranged for food;[6] They were an agrarian society, growing beans, squash, and maize.

[7] Stemmed knives, small triangular projectile points, and flake scrapers are the few types of tools found from the Early Whittlesey period.

[6] The remains of some of the people identifies deaths due to disease, nutritional deficiency, and traumatic injury, including charred and butchered human bones.

Due to the degree of displacement of Native groups during the early contact period, it is difficult to ascertain what happened to the Whittlesey culture people.

Animal bones, Madison point stone tools, and Tuttle Hill decorated pottery sherds were attributed to the Whittlesey culture.

The excavated items were found over a dispersed area in 1999 by a group led by Mark Kollecker, Supervisor of Archaeology Field Programs of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

[11] Kollecker led another Archaeology Field Experience program group in April and May 2000 and found several post molds and nine cooking and storage pits of prehistoric people.

A second village on the east side of the river featured a wooden palisade and may have actually been Erie, while Conneaut Works shows characteristics now known to be Whittlesey.

Later, an Ottawa/ Mississauga camp was noted in the same general area, where Ottawas could access the resources of the Grand, Shenango and Mahoning River Valleys.