County Heritage Museum Hosts Mounds, Moon, and Stars
Mounds, Moon, and Stars: The Legacy of Ohio’s Magnificent Earthworks is a traveling exhibit created by the Great Circle Alliance with funding from Ohio Humanities. Ohio is home to the largest ancient geometric earthworks in the world. Created nearly 2,000 years ago, it is believed these monumental creations served many purposes including astronomical observatories, religious worship, ceremonial and gathering places, and burial sites. The Newark Earthworks, including the Great Circle, Octagon, and Wright Square join six other Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks inscribed as Ohio’s first and only United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site.
The exhibition focuses on the Newark Earthworks as representative of the flourishing Hopewell era culture and “draws back the curtain on the sophisticated lives of the local people while at the same time looking at the scientific and artistic complexities of the sites”.
This earthwork complex includes geometric shapes interconnected by low walls built from earth carried by human hands and laid intentionally one basketful at a time. An estimated 7 million cubic yards (approximately 21 million baskets) of earth were used to construct the Newark Earthworks which covered over four square miles of present-day Newark, Ohio. Many Indigenous groups from throughout North America gathered at the Newark Earthworks to practice spiritual traditions, celebrate, and connect to the world around them. Non-local materials were brought by the people gathering here from over 1,800 miles away. Obsidian from the Rocky Mountain region, lightning whelk shells and shark teeth from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, mica from the Blue Ridge Mountain Region, and copper from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan have been found at the sites and were used to create ceremonial items interred in the earthworks.
The Octagon Earthworks are believed to have been used as a lunar observatory to track the 18.6-year cycle of the moon that rises directly through the passageway linking the Observatory Circle and the Octagon. At the northernmost point of the cycle, the moon rises within one-half of a degree of the exact center of the octagon. The accuracy is twice as precise as Stonehenge. Interestingly, Stonehenge could fit inside the Circle, and like Stonehenge is located 11 miles from a flint quarry (Flint Ridge). On August 1, the Ohio History Connection announced a settlement had been reached with the golf course leased the Octagon property since the 1930s, and it will be fully open to the public beginning in 2025.
Learn more about the visionary Hopewell culture’s astronomy, geometry, engineering, construction, and art skills, and the lasting legacy of the earthworks they created. Indigenous history is often thought of as a thing of the past. Through a combination of art and heritage, exhibitgoers will leave with a new appreciation of the importance of this period in Ohio’s rich history and an understanding of current Native American culture.
“We are excited to host this exhibition and highlight not only the Newark Ceremonial Earthworks but the past and present sites in Belmont County such as the Barnesville Petroglyphs,” said Museum Curator Cathryn Stanley. “This exhibition is specifically designed to be accessible and engaging to visitors of all ages and is unlike any exhibit the museum has hosted previously.”
The Belmont County Heritage Museum is open Thursday-Saturday, 10 am – 4 pm. There is a suggested donation of $5 for this special exhibit. The museum will also participate in Ohio History Connection’s Ohio Open Doors on Sunday, Sept. 15 from 1-4. For more information about the exhibit and the museum, call 740-298-7020.
