The Fertile Earth and the Ordered Cosmos: Reflections on the Newark Earthworks and World Heritage

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 (along with neighboring sites) were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023—a designation that r...