HOPEWELL CEREMONIAL EARTHWORKS

Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks Witness Ancient Brilliance. View of Mound City earthworks as the sun rises, link to official website. Image courtesy of National Park Service, Tom Engberg.
Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks | https://hopewellearthworks.org

The United States of America nominated the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks in the Extended 45th Session of UNESCO World Heritage Committee, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, September 19, 2023. 

The UNESCO World Heritage session Floor (untranslated) livestream recording is free and open to the public. The UNESCO World Heritage Committee debate about the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks starts at 2:15:31 in the AM recording for September 19th, 2023.
......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Video courtesy of the Ohio History Connection YouTube, September 2023.

"The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks share certain characteristics with other monumental sites built substantially from earth, such as Poverty Point, Cahokia Mounds, Effigy Mounds National Monument, Amazonian geoglyphs, Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated sites, but they are unique in their combination of vast scale, geometrical precision, incorporation of astronomical alignments, and broad geographic distribution. To have accomplished this with a predominantly hunting and gathering economy only supplemented by a suite of locally domesticated plants and with a fundamentally egalitarian society is unprecedented in world history.

The repetition of monumental earthwork forms across a large area, built to a similar scale, using a common unit of measure, and incorporating a similar series of astronomical alignments into that architecture, demonstrates a level of integration between otherwise disparate cultural groups that is unexpected and unprecedented for societies without more complex social organizations. This cultural integration was reinforced by an interregional network of raw material acquisition and craft production emphasizing a shared iconography. These earthworks, as a set, bear witness to a remarkable non-urban, non-hierarchical civilization that persisted for three to four centuries and exerted an influence that extended across much of eastern North America.

These Ancient Ohio monuments are the largest earthworks in the world that are not fortifications or defensive structures. Together these earthwork sites present the climax of the Woodland Period cultures of North America. Their extraordinary size, beauty, and precision make them outstanding examples of architectural form, landscape design, and human creative genius, worthy of inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List."
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Who are the Hopewell?
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................

What is the Hopewell Culture? Is it an American Indian nation?

The "Hopewell Culture" is the name archaeologists have given to the people who built the Newark Earthworks. It is an archaeological culture defined on the basis of certain kinds of artifacts, architecture, and cultural practices that occurred in southern and central Ohio (and other regions of eastern North America) from about 100 B.C. to A.D. 400, roughly 2,000 years ago. The term is not the name of any American Indian tribe. 

We have no idea what the ancient peoples who built the great earthworks might have called themselves, but their descendants undoubtedly include many of the historic tribes who lived in the Eastern Woodlands. 

The people of the Hopewell culture were farmers, fishers, hunters, and gatherers of wild plant foods. They lived in small villages scattered along the major tributaries of the Ohio River – especially the Great and Little Miami, the Scioto and Muskingum rivers. They are known especially for their monumental earthworks and for their spectacular art objects crafted from materials such as copper, mica, and obsidian obtained from the ends of their world.

"Of course, it’s not a people, tribe, or culture. Much of that information was lost as a result of the great die off of American Indians, after arrival of Europeans, from disease. I think of it more as an era or age. Like the Bronze, Iron, and Industrial ages. I think of the ancestors who created these wonders as living in the Hopewell era or age." -Director Dr. John Low, Newark Earthworks Center.

For a detailed discussion of this topic, please see Ohio's Earthworks Timeline, on the Ancient Ohio Trail [external links].

What is the Eastern Agricultural Complex (EAC)? Did the Hopewell people have corn?

The Eastern Agricultural Complex (EAC) is a group of plants that were domesticated by American Indians and were key crops which grow best in disturbed floodplains. It is one of fifteen plant domestication centers in the entire world! They were crops that the Hopewell culture grew along with wild plants, seeds, nuts, fruits, and roots.

  • Acorn squash (Cucurbita pepo L.) domesticated 5000 BP
  • Sunflower (Helianthus annus L. var. macrocarpus) domesticated 4800 BP
  • Sumpweed (Iva annua), domesticated 4400 BP
  • Goosefoot (Chenopodium berlandieri) domesticated 3800 BP
  • Maygrass (Phalaris caroliniana)
  • Little barley (Hordeum pusillum)
  • Erect knotweed (Polygonum erectum) domesticated 2000 BP

The people of the Hopewell culture grew domesticated corn; but it wasn't a major part of their diet. The earliest date in the Eastern Woodlands we have for corn is 2300 BP. Because corn was domesticated in Mexico, bringing a plant to the northeast required further changes to get it to be able to not only survive but to thrive. Ohio has more humidity, longer winters, and many other challenges which were not a problem in Mexico.

Most of the information above came from "The sleeping crops of eastern North America: a new synthesis" Natalie G. Mueller. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 15 May 2025. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0192 [external link]

Resolutions of Support
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Videos*
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................

.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................

The Fertile Earth and the Ordered Cosmos: Reflections on the Newark Earthworks and World Heritage. Edited by Elizabeth Weiser, Timothy Jordan, and Richard Shiels.

The Ohio State University Press, June 2023.

The Fertile Earth and the Ordered Cosmos: Reflections on the Newark Earthworks and World Heritage. Edited by M. ELIZABETH WEISER, TIMOTHY R. W. JORDAN, AND RICHARD D. SHIELS. Image courtesy of The Ohio State University Press.
$24.95 in Paperback or PDF EBook.
25 Color Illustrations, 152 pages.
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.

The Newark Earthworks: Enduring Monuments, Contested Meanings. Edited by Lindsay Jones and Richard Shiels. 


Considered a wonder of the ancient world, the Newark Earthworks—the gigantic geometrical mounds of earth built nearly two thousand years ago in the Ohio valley--have been a focal point for archaeologists and surveyors, researchers and scholars for almost two centuries. In their prime one of the premier pilgrimage destinations in North America, these monuments are believed to have been ceremonial centers used by ancestors of Native Americans, called the "Hopewell culture," as social gathering places, religious shrines, pilgrimage sites, and astronomical observatories. Yet much of this territory has been destroyed by the city of Newark, and the site currently "hosts" a private golf course, making it largely inaccessible to the public.

The first book-length volume devoted to the site, The Newark Earthworks reveals the magnitude and the geometric precision of what remains of the earthworks and the site’s undeniable importance to our history. Including contributions from archaeologists, historians, cultural geographers, and cartographers, as well as scholars in religious studies, legal studies, indigenous studies, and preservation studies, the book follows an interdisciplinary approach to shine light on the Newark Earthworks and argues compellingly for its designation as a World Heritage Site.

Articles*
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Past Court Cases*
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................
*As time goes by, links will become increasingly less reliable. Thank you for your patience.
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)