The Newark Earthworks, Ohio’s official prehistoric monument and an important component of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks nomination to the UNESCO World Heritage List is the focus of an “Ask Me Anything” forum on Reddit AskHistorians.

Dr. Richard Shiels, Director of the Ohio State University’s Newark Earthworks Center, and I will be answering your questions on Friday 30 August from 1:00 PM until around 5:00 PM.

Here’s the blurb Dick and I wrote to get the discussion started:

The Newark Earthworks as they may have appeared 2,000 years ago. Image courtesy of the University of Cincinnati’s Center for the Electronic Reconstruction of Historical and Archaeological Sites (CERHAS).

The Newark Earthworks are the largest complex of geometric earthworks in the world. Built more than 2,000 years ago by the indigenous American Indian culture known to archaeologists as the Hopewell, these earthworks encode a sophisticated understanding of geometry, astronomy, and features of the local landscape into this uncanny architecture. Much of the Newark Earthworks has been destroyed by agriculture and urban development, but two major elements of this massive earthen composition remain today – the Great Circle and the Octagon Earthworks.

Join Brad Lepper, Curator of Archaeology for the Ohio Historical Society, and Richard Shiels, historian and Director of the Ohio State University’s Newark Earthworks Center, for a discussion of what we know about these magnificent monuments and the culture that built them, how they came to be preserved, and current efforts to inscribe the Hopewell Ceremonial  Earthworks, including the Newark Earthworks, on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

So join the discussion and ask us anything!

Brad Lepper