Newark is a city serving as the county seat of Licking County, Ohio, United States, 40 miles (64 km) east of Columbus, at the junction of the forks of the Licking River. The population was 49,934 at the 2020 census, making it the 18th largest city in Ohio. It is part of the Columbus metropolitan area.
The Hopewell tradition, also called the Hopewell culture and Hopewellian exchange, describes a network of precontact Native American cultures that flourished in settlements along rivers in the northeastern and midwestern Eastern Woodlands from 100 BCE to 500 CE, in the Middle Woodland period. The Hopewell tradition was not a single culture or society but a widely dispersed set of populations connected by a common network of trade routes.
The Great Serpent Mound is a 1,348-foot-long (411 m), three-foot-high prehistoric effigy mound located in Peebles, Ohio. It was built on what is known as the Serpent Mound crater plateau, running along the Ohio Brush Creek in Adams County, Ohio. The mound is the largest serpent effigy in the world.
Fort Ancient is a name for a Native American culture that flourished from Ca. 1000-1750 CE and predominantly inhabited land near the Ohio River valley in the areas of modern-day southern Ohio, northern Kentucky, southeastern Indiana and western West Virginia. Although a contemporary of the Mississippian culture, they are often considered a "sister culture" and distinguished from the Mississippian culture. Although far from agreed upon, there is evidence to suggest that the Fort Ancient Culture were not the direct descendants of the Hopewellian Culture. It is suspected that the Fort Ancient Culture introduced maize agriculture to Ohio. The Fort Ancient Culture were most likely the builders of the Great Serpent Mound. Recent archeological study and carbon dating suggests that Alligator Mound in Granville also dates to the Fort Ancient era, rather than the assumed Hopewell era. It is believed that neither the Serpent or Alligator Mounds are burial locations, but rather served as ceremonial effigy sites.
In archaeology, timber circles are rings of upright wooden posts, built mainly by ancient peoples in the British Isles and North America. They survive only as gapped rings of post-holes, with no evidence they formed walls, making them distinct from palisades. Like stone circles, it is believed their purpose was ritual, ceremonial, and/or astronomical.
Fort Ancient is a Native American earthworks complex located in Washington Township, Warren County, Ohio, along the eastern shore of the Little Miami River about seven miles (11 km) southeast of Lebanon on State Route 350. The site is the largest prehistoric hilltop enclosure in the United States with three and one-half miles (18,000 ft) of walls in a 100-acre (0.40 km2) complex. Built by the Hopewell culture, who lived in the area from the 200 BC to AD 400, the site is situated on a wooded bluff 270 feet (82 m) above the Little Miami. It is the namesake of a culture known as Fort Ancient who lived near the complex long after it was constructed.
A number of pre-Columbian cultures in North America were collectively termed "Mound Builders", but the term has no formal meaning. It does not refer to a specific people or archaeological culture, but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks which indigenous peoples erected for an extended period of more than 5,000 years. The "Mound Builder" cultures span the period of roughly 3500 BCE to the 16th century CE, including the Archaic period, Woodland period, and Mississippian period. Geographically, the cultures were present in the region of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River Valley, and the Mississippi River valley and its tributary waters.
The Great Hopewell Road is thought to connect the Hopewell culture monumental earthwork centers located at Newark and Chillicothe, a distance of 60 miles (97 km) through the heart of Ohio, United States. The Newark complex was built 2,000 to 1800 years ago.
The Newark Holy Stones refer to a set of artifacts allegedly discovered by David Wyrick in 1860 within a cluster of ancient Indian burial mounds near Newark, Ohio, now generally believed to be a hoax. The set consists of the Keystone, a stone bowl, and the Decalogue with its sandstone box. They can be viewed at the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum in Coshocton, Ohio. The site where the objects were found is known as The Newark Earthworks, one of the biggest collections from an ancient American Indian culture known as the Hopewell that existed from approximately 100 BC to AD 500.
Moorehead Circle was a triple woodhenge constructed about two millennia ago at the Fort Ancient Earthworks in the U.S. state of Ohio.
The Alligator Effigy Mound is an effigy mound in Granville, Ohio, United States. The mound is believed to have been built between AD 800 and 1200 by people of the Fort Ancient culture. The mound was likely a ceremonial site, as it was not used for burials.
The Newark Earthworks in Newark and Heath, Ohio, consist of three sections of preserved earthworks: the Great Circle Earthworks, the Octagon Earthworks, and the Wright Earthworks. This complex, built by the Hopewell culture between 100 BCE and 400 CE, contains the largest earthen enclosures in the world, and was about 3,000 acres in total extent. Less than 10 percent of the total site has been preserved since European-American settlement; this area contains a total of 206 acres (83 ha). Newark's Octagon and Great Circle Earthworks are managed by the Ohio History Connection. A designated National Historic Landmark, in 2006 the Newark Earthworks was also designated as the "official prehistoric monument of the State of Ohio."
The Portsmouth Earthworks are a large prehistoric mound complex constructed by the Native American Adena and Ohio Hopewell cultures of eastern North America. The site was one of the largest earthwork ceremonial centers constructed by the Hopewell and is located at the confluence of the Scioto and Ohio Rivers, in present-day Ohio.
Prehistory of Ohio provides an overview of the activities that occurred prior to Ohio's recorded history. The ancient hunters, Paleo-Indians, descended from humans that crossed the Bering Strait. There is evidence of Paleo-Indians in Ohio, who were hunter-gatherers that ranged widely over land to hunt large game. For instance, mastodon bones were found at the Burning Tree Mastodon site that showed that it had been butchered. Clovis points have been found that indicate interaction with other groups and hunted large game. The Paleo Crossing site and Nobles Pond site provide evidence that groups interacted with one another. The Paleo-Indian's diet included fish, small game, and nuts and berries that gathered. They lived in simple shelters made of wood and bark or hides. Canoes were created by digging out trees with granite axes.
The Keiter Mound is a Native American mound in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. Located north of the city of Wilmington, it sits on a wooded hill above the stream bottom of a small secondary creek, the Anderson Fork. About 5.5 feet (1.7 m) tall at its highest point, the mound measures 58 feet (18 m) from north to south and 65 feet (20 m) from east to west.
The Marietta Earthworks is an archaeological site located at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio Rivers in Washington County, Ohio, United States. Most of this Hopewellian complex of earthworks is now covered by the modern city of Marietta. Archaeologists have dated the ceremonial site's construction to approximately 100 BCE to 500 CE.
The Rocky Fork Park Site is an archaeological site in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. Located in Rocky Fork State Park in eastern Highland County, the site's earthworks have been designated a historic site because of their archaeological importance.
William Francis Romain is an American archaeologist, archaeoastronomer, and author. William Romain received his Ph.D. in archaeology from the University of Leicester and M.A. and B.A. degrees in anthropology from Kent State University. He specializes in the study of ancient religions, cognitive archaeology, and archaeoastronomy. He is a Research Associate with the Indiana University, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and serves on the editorial board of the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and The Explorers Club. Romain is a past advisor to the Board of Trustees for the Heartland Earthworks Conservancy, past Research Associate with the Newark Earthworks Center at Ohio State University and recipient of the Archaeological Society of Ohio's Robert Converse award for Outstanding Contributions to Ohio Archaeology. William Romain is a licensed private pilot and holds certification in marine celestial navigation. He has conducted archaeoastronomic fieldwork in the Eastern United States, China, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Thailand, Cambodia, and Myanmar (Burma). In 2011 Romain led a team of archaeologists in an investigation of Serpent Mound, in Adams County, Ohio. This was the first major investigation of the effigy in more than one hundred years and included Geoprobe coring, hand coring, limited excavation, ground-penetrating radar, and electric resistivity analysis. Among the results were new radiocarbon dates for the effigy suggesting it was built about 2,300 years ago by people of the Early Woodland period. Other work has included archaeoastronomic findings for Poverty Point and Watson Brake in Louisiana, Mound City in Ohio, the Newark Earthworks and Great Hopewell Road in Ohio, and Cahokia in Illinois. Most recently William Romain has published new archaeoastronomic findings for Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the Great Ziggurat of Ur in Iraq, Xanadu in Inner Mongolia, and the Jokhang, Samye, and Tradruk temples in Tibet.
The Stubbs Earthworks was a massive Ohio Hopewell culture archaeological site located in Morrow in Warren County, Ohio.
