Prehistoric Earthwork, Yorktown Enclosure, to be Permanently Preserved

The prehistoric Yorktown Enclosure is hidden in this woods between Muncie and Yorktown.
Image Courtesy of The Archaeological Conservancy.

March 25, 2015.

The Archaeological Conservancy has written an exciting article about the recent preservation of an Hopewellian (100 B.C.- 400 A.D.) enclosure called the Yorktown Enclosure to create a permanent archaeological preserve.

"The Yorktown Enclosure is assigned by archaeologists to the New Castle Phase, a period of time between 250 BC and AD 350 when in east central Indiana, American Indians constructed relatively small circular earthworks and sometimes sizeable burial mounds. It is related to the more elaborate Ohio Hopewell Culture, whose earthworks of the same time period sometimes enclose over one hundred acres with earthen walls miles long. The Yorktown Enclosure seems have been recognized as a significant place as early as 1881 when a history of Delaware County mentioned that near Yorktown there was “one of those enclosures … of the class know as fortifications”. Since enclosures were typically built by digging a circular ditch and pitching the earth to the outside to create an encircling wall, they do superficially resemble a defensive structure. Today most archaeologists consider them to be ceremonial sites where the ditch and wall separate the interior, sacred space where important activities would take place from the outside mundane world of everyday life."

-The Archaeological Conservancy.

To read the full article, click here.

For more information,

Visit:

• Ind. circle believed to be ancient site
• Associated Press, NBC News.com, March 12, 2007.
• The Archaeological Conservancy
• Indiana Department of Natural Resources: Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology
• Facebook
• Earthworks Timeline
• Hopewell 100 B.C. - 400 A.D.
• The Ancient Ohio Trail
• Who Were The Hopewell?
• Archaeology Magazine, 2009.