Earthworks

May 15, 2024

Cartoon Room 1, Third Floor, Ohio Union, Columbus Campus
9 a.m. - 7 p.m.

The Newark Earthworks are the largest set of geometric earthen enclosures in the world. Honored as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023, the entire Newark Earthworks originally encompassed more than four square miles.

It was built between CE 1 to CE 400 by the ancestors of contemporary American Indian peoples who are identified today as the Hopewell Culture/Era. This architectural wonder was part cathedral, part university, part social space, part cemetery and part astronomical observatory. Through their genius, hard work, and collaborative efforts these ancestors inscribed upon the land a remarkable wealth of indigenous knowledge relating to geometry and astronomy encoded in the design of these earthworks.

The Octagon Earthworks are aligned to the four moonrises and four moonsets that mark the limits of a complicated 18 year and 219 day-long cycle north and south on the eastern horizon.

This Gathering is built upon the hard work of organizers and attendees of previous Mounds & Memory workshops and the goal of this Gathering is to reunite participants in previous workshops, including representatives of the Rainy River First Nations (Ontario), the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Nation, The Ohio State University, the University of Toronto, and Harvard University. to share and celebrate these "monuments of the Ohio River Valley." 

Flyer PDF.

Speakers:

• Jennifer Aultman, Chief Historic Sites Officer, Ohio History Connection
• Kevin Daugherty (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi) Language Specialist and Elder
• Steven Gavazzi, Director of CHRR, The Ohio State University
• Bradley Lepper, Curator of Archaeology, Ohio History Connection
• Lucy Murphy, Professor Emeritus of History, The Ohio State University
• Kevin Nolan, Director and Senior Archaeologist of Applied Anthropology Laboratories, Ball State University
• Justin Parscher, Assistant Professor of Practice Landscape Architecture, Knowlton School of Architecture
• Richard Shiels, Associate Professor Emeritus of History, The Ohio State University

If you require an accommodation such as interpretation to participate in this in-person event, or other accommodations, please contact Megan Cromwell (cromwell.34@osu.edu) . Requests made by April 30 will help provide seamless access. 

Photos and/or video is being taken at this event and may appear in The Ohio State University marketing materials. By attending this event, you hereby authorize the university to use your image in any and all use related to the educational mission of the university without compensation. Please notify the Newark Earthworks Center hosting the event if you wish to attend but not have your image used in this way. Please contact Megan Cromwell (cromwell.34@osu.edu).

The Ohio Union: Visiting the Union

• Accessibility
• Directions and Parking
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Virtual Tour

CABS Bus Route:

Campus Area Bus Service is a free transit service provided by The Ohio State University Transportation and Traffic Management. CABS is dedicated to providing clean, reliable, and hassle-free transportation on and around Ohio State’s Columbus Campus. Track CABS in real-time via the Ohio State app.

The Ohio Union is  a stop on the Campus Connector route every 15 minutes from 7 a.m. through 7 p.m. The High Street and 15th stop on the Buckeye Express and East Residential lines is close to the Ohio Union if you don't mind some walking.

• Buckeye Express, 7 a.m. - 7 p.m., every 15 minutes
• Campus Connector, 7 a.m. - 7 p.m., every 15 minutes
• East Residential, 7 a.m. - 7 p.m., every 30 minutes

"CABS Bus Route Map 2024" (PDF).

Parking:

The Parking garages adjacent to the north side of the Ohio Union are operated by CampusParc. Their number is
614-688-0000 and their website is: http://www.osu.campusparc.com

Parking Rates

30 Minutes $2.75
1 Hour $5.25
2 Hours $9.00
3 Hours $12.50
4 Hours $16.00
Daily Max $17.25
Lost Ticket $44.50

Agenda:

9:00 - 9.30 a.m. John Low (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi), Director of the Newark Earthworks Center, “Welcome”

9:30 - 10:30 a.m. Bradley Lepper, Curator of Archaeology, Ohio History Connection, “An Archaeologist's Perspective on the Newark Earthworks”

10:30 - 11:00 a.m. Break

11:00 - 12:00 p.m.  Kevin Nolan, Director and Senior Archaeologist, Applied Anthropology Laboratories (AAL), Ball State University; and Justin Parscher, Assistant Professor of Practice Landscape Architecture, Knowlton School of Architecture, The Ohio State University, “Modeling Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks”

12:00 - 1:00 Lunch Break

1:00 - 2:00 p.m. Stephen Gavazzi, Director of CHRR, The Ohio State University, “Land Grant, Land Grab Universities”

2:00 - 3:00 p.m. Licking County Ohio Earthworks and the Newark Earthworks Center (45 minutes), Lucy Murphy, Co-Founder of the Newark Earthworks Center; and Richard Shiels, founding Director of the Newark Earthworks Center

3:00 - 3:30 p.m. Break

3:30 - 4:30 p.m. Kevin Daugherty (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi) Language Specialist and Elder, "Contemporary Connections to the Mounds and Sky"

4:30 - 5:30 p.m. Jennifer Aultman, Chief Historic Sites Officer, Ohio History Connection, “World Heritage Ohio and the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks”

5:30 - 6:00 p.m. John Low (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi), Director of the Newark Earthworks Center, Closing Remarks

Organized by the Newark Earthworks Center-(John Low, Marti Chaatsmith, Megan Cromwell); Cheryl Cash; and Stephen Gavazzi; with financial support from the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Themes Program, the Center of Religion, Center for the Study of Religion, and American Indian Studies and our donors. Thank you!

The Wex: June 2024- August 21, 2024

Information and Tickets

Free for all audiences.

Experience visual and performing art by Sugpiaq artist, writer, and Wexner Center Artist Residency Award recipient Tanya Lukin Linklater in her first US survey exhibition.

Her largest presentation to date, the exhibition explores Lukin Linklater’s multidisciplinary practice over the past decade and features a Wex-commissioned project informed by her visit to Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks in Newark, Ohio, the nation’s newest United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site. You’ll encounter other new works that cite Indigenous art lineages, embrace ancestral belongings, and propose that weather organizes environments as well as communities.

Lukin Linklater’s perception of time and place comes across in her sculpture, installation, rehearsals, video, works on paper, and writing. She explains that her practice is inspired by her upbringing in the Kodiak archipelago of Alaska. “I look to my Alutiiq/Sugpiaq knowledges in relation to our homelands, waterways, atmospheres and our minds.”

The exhibition’s title is informed by an interview with the late Sugpiaq cultural worker Eunice von Scheele Neseth and a poem by Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Solider. Describing grass in different states—soft, cured, and bruised by the weather—references the procedures that women of Kodiak Island follow when harvesting and processing plant material used to weave baskets. The imagery evoked by the words also asks viewers to consider observation and touch in the acts of restoration and repair.

During the exhibition’s opening and closing moments, visitors can experience a multiday series of improvisational open rehearsals with dance artists in the galleries. In August, Inner blades of grass will also culminate with a gathering of Indigenous artists, musicians, poets, and performers.

ACCESSIBILITY 
We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. If you have questions about accessibility or require an accommodation such as CART captioning or ASL interpretation to participate in this event, please email accessibility@wexarts.org or call (614) 688-3890. Requests made by two weeks in advance will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the Wexner Center for the Arts will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.

The Octagon State Memorial is one of the most spectacular surviving remnants of the Newark Earthworks and is part of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks.

The Octagon is connected to a perfectly circular enclosure 1,054 feet in diameter. The architecture of the Octagon Earthworks encodes a sophisticated understanding of geometry and astronomy. It is a National Historical Landmark and part of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks UNESCO World Heritage site.

The precise geometry of Newark’s circle-octagon centers on its axial center line, beginning at the center of the Observatory Mound and pointing 38 degrees north of east. It’s a long line of sight which, if the site were cleared of trees, would lead the eye to a precise point on distant horizon. From here, as a result of generations of careful measurements and designing, the American Indians 2,000 years ago could predict, and bear witness to, the return of the moon to its northernmost position – just once every 6,789 days.

The movements of the moon are complex. Nowadays, we notice that the moon has different phases over about 29 days. But the builders of the earthworks noticed much more complicated lunar patterns: first, about every four weeks its rising point swings back and forth between the southeast and the northeast; and second, the width of this angle expands very slowly over about 9 1/3 years (about 3395 days), and then contracts again at the same rate. The moon’s setting points move the same way across the western horizon.

So there are eight points where the moon appears to reverse direction along the horizon during this long, complex cycle. Remarkably, all eight are marked precisely by these earthen walls and gateways. The architecture here tells us which one mattered the most: the extreme northernmost moonrise perfectly aligns along the central axis of the Octagon. This happened only once in 18.6 years or 6,789 days.

Portions of the Octagon Earthworks is open to the public during daylight hours 365 days a year, but much of the site is used as a private golf course for most of the year, so access is restricted. Five times this year, however, golfing is suspended and the entire site is made available to the general public.

The grounds of the Octagon State Memorial [external link] will be open to the public for general strolling and viewing from sunrise to sunset.

• Sunday, April 14th
• Monday, April 15th
• Monday, July 22nd
• Sunday, October 20th
• Monday, October 21st

Octagon State Memorial, 125 N. 33rd Street, Newark, OH 43055

Sunday, April 14

Octagon Tours: 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.

Great Circle Tours: 10 a.m., 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.

Talks: Noon & 4 p.m.

Ongoing activities

• Pop Up Interpretation tables
  • World Heritage Sites
  •  Sun and Moon
• Bookstore
• Exhibitor and partner tables

Monday, April 15

Octagon Tours: Noon, 2 p.m. & 4 p.m.

Great Circle Tours:Noon, 2 p.m. & 4 p.m.

Talks: 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.

Ongoing activities

• Bookstore
  • Water and cookie vendors
• Exhibitor and partner tables

Take your tour with you, with The Ancient Ohio Trail [external link].

We hope to see you there!

For more information, visit Ohio History Connection [external link].

"Chief Topinabee was born around 1758 in his father’s village on the Saint Joseph River, in what is now southwest Michigan. He probably died on 29 July 1826 near present-day Niles, Michigan. A complicated leader of his village, he may have fought at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, certainly was a signatory to the Treaty of Greenville the next year, appears to have become an ally of Tecumseh and his intertribal confederacy at Prophetstown, may have been a participant in the Battle of Fort Dearborn in 1812, and served as a leader of strategic resistance to settler domination. The usual narrative is that Topinabee was a great warrior and leader of his people who in the last years of his life degenerated into a hapless drunkard and accommodationist. But is that a fair depiction of him? This essay is a celebration of ethnohistory and the paths it has cleared for the use of nontraditional sources of information. The article is based largely on access to a family archive that provides a counternarrative to the usual biography of Topinabee and allows for a fuller understanding of him as a leader and a person."

CBS News Correspondent Conor Knighton explores the grandeur of the Ohio's first UNESCO World Heritage site, the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks [external link], with Dr. Brad Lepper and Dr. John Low.

• Fort Ancient State Memorial [external link] | Ohio History Connection
• Hopewell Culture National Historical Park [external link] | National Park Service
• Hopewell Mound Group
  • Mound City Group
  • Hopeton Earthworks
  • High Bank Works
  • Seip Earthworks
• Newark Earthworks [external link] | Ohio History Connection
  • Octagon State Memorial
  • Great Circle Earthworks
  • Wright Earthworks

Potawatomi basket making is a reclamation and recovery of a powerful piece of native knowledge and technology and represents a potent counter-colonial and counter-hegemonic act with lasting implications. This exhibit reflects an understanding that objects are not lifeless things that occupy space. They have spirit and meaning. Centered upon intellectual and material property, basket weaving is an opportunity for Native women and men to make their own histories by using the past to "read the present.

This exhibit is curated by Director of the Newark Earthworks Center John N. Low, PhD, associate professor in Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University and enrolled citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.

Sponsored by The Newark Earthworks Center with support from an Indigenous Arts and Humanities Grant by the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme.

Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, UNESCO World Heritage Site

45^th Extended Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee | Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

September 19, 2023

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural World Heritage inscription recognizes the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage considered of outstanding value for all of humanity. 

Nominations by a country must represent at least one of the criteria of world heritage as defined by UNESCO. The authenticity of the nominated site and its protection and management are also considered.

The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks are Ohio's first UNESCO World Heritage inscription and the twenty-fifth for the United States of America.

Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks is a series of eight monumental earthen enclosure complexes built between 2,000 and 1,600 years ago along the central tributaries of the Ohio River in east-central North America. They are the most representative surviving expressions of the Indigenous tradition now referred to as the Hopewell culture. 

Their scale and complexity are evidenced in precise geometric figures as well as hilltops sculpted to enclose vast, level plazas. Huge earthen squares, circles, and octagons are executed with a precision of form, technique, and dimension consistently deployed across a wide geographic region. There are alignments with the cycles of the Sun and the far more complex cycles of the Moon. 

These earthworks served as ceremonial centers, built by dispersed, non-hierarchical groups whose way of life was supported by a mix of foraging and farming. The sites were the center of a continent-wide sphere of influence and interaction and have yielded finely crafted ritual objects fashioned from exotic raw materials obtained from distant places.

Criterion (i) Represent a masterpiece of human creative genius

Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks comprises highly complex masterpieces of landscape architecture. They are exceptional amongst ancient earthworks worldwide not only in their enormous scale and wide geographic distribution, but also in their geometric precision. These features imply high-precision techniques of design and construction and an observational knowledge of complex astronomical cycles that would have required generations to codify. The series includes the finest extant examples of these various principles, shapes, and alignments, both in geometric earthworks and in the pre-eminent surviving hilltop enclosure. They reflect the pinnacle of Hopewell intellectual, technical, and symbolic achievement.

Criterion (iii) Bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared

Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks bears exceptional testimony to the unique characteristics of their builders, who lived in small, dispersed, egalitarian groups, between 1 and 400 CE, amongst the river valleys of what is now southern and central Ohio. Their economy was a mix of foraging, fishing, farming, and cultivation, yet they gathered periodically to create, manage, and worship within these massive public works. The precision of their carefully composed earthen architecture, and its timber precursors, reflected an elaborate ceremonialism and linked it with the order and rhythms of the cosmos. The earthworks in this series, together with their archaeological remains, offer the finest extant testimony to the nature, scope, and richness of the Hopewell cultural tradition.

Edited by Elizabeth Weiser, Timothy Jordan, and Richard Shiels. The Ohio State University Press.

Available for purchase June 2023! $24.95 in Paperback and PDF EBook editions. 

Rising in quiet grandeur from the earth in an astoundingly engineered arrangement that ancient peoples mapped to the movements of the moon, Ohio’s Newark Earthworks form the largest geometric earthen complex ever known. In the two thousand years of their existence, they have served as gathering place, ceremonial site, fairground, army encampment, golf course, and park. And, at long last, they are poised (along with neighboring sites) to be named a UNESCO World Heritage Site—a designation that recognizes their international importance as a direct link to the ancient past as well as their continuing cultural and archaeological significance.

The lush photos and wide-ranging essays of The Fertile Earth and the Ordered Cosmos honor this significance, not only to the global community but to local individuals and scholars who have developed intimate connections to the Earthworks. In sharing their experiences with this ancient site, public historians, archaeologists, physicists, architects, and others—including local and Indigenous voices—continue the work of nearly two hundred years of citizen efforts to protect and make accessible the Newark Earthworks after centuries of stewardship by Indigenous people. The resulting volume serves as a rich primer on the site for those unfamiliar with its history and a beautifully produced tribute for those who are already acquainted with its wonders.

All proceeds from the sale of this book go to support the Ohio History Connection and the Newark Earthworks Center in their efforts to manage and interpret the site for the world.

We are sharing an announcement from the Ohio History Connection.

We are pleased to announce the Ohio History Connection can proceed with its efforts to acquire the Octagon Earthworks lease from Moundbuilders Country Club in Newark and provide full public access to the site.

On Dec. 7, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld decisions by Ohio’s Fifth District Court of Appeals and the Licking County Common Pleas Court.

The court’s decision supports our mission to make the Octagon Earthworks fully accessible to the public. It also recognizes the incredible accomplishments of American Indian ancestors in Ohio, how relevant these amazing earthworks are today and how essential their preservation and careful restoration are for the future.

Ohio History Connection's guiding principles throughout this process have been to enable full public access to the Octagon Earthworks while ensuring Moundbuilders Country Club receives just compensation for the value of the lease.

A jury trial will be scheduled to determine the value of the lease.

• The Ohio Supreme Court Decision for 2020-0191: State ex rel. Ohio History Connection v. The Moundbuilders Country Club Company and Park National Bank (external link)
  • December 7, 2022.