Newark Earthworks Day Honors the Past, Celebrates the Future
With
a full day of events in two locations, Newark Earthworks Day is right around
the corner. Mark your calendars for Saturday, May 3, 2008. All events are
free and open to the public. The Newark Earthworks Center was name an
official Center by The Ohio State University Board of Trustees on December
8, 2006 and is the first official center at The Ohio State University at
Newark.
This January the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that it has included the Newark Earthworks on a short list of sites which the U.S. intends to nominate for World Heritage status. This year’s NED will compare the Newark earthworks to two World Heritage sites: Stonehenge in England and the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon in Mexico.
“The Newark Earthworks were a ceremonial center that drew people from hundreds, even thousands of miles,” Professor Richard Shiels explained. “It is appropriate that we will draw people from great distances again and that these ten dancers will travel such a distance to lead a celebration at the Great Circle.”
The John Gilbert Reese Center (on the Ohio State Newark and Central Ohio Technical College joint campus) will house the first part of the program.
Between 9 am and 4:30 pm, guests are invited to explore exhibits and hear presentations about Newark, Stonehenge and the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon at Teotihuacan.
At 5:30 pm, visit the Great Circle Earthworks to witness the ribbon cutting ceremony for the newly renovated Ohio Historical Society (OHS) Museum. Join in a community celebration, which will include tours of the museum. Visitors are encouraged to bring picnics to the Great Circle all day.
At 6:30 pm, the Great Circle will feature a ceremony led by Aztec dancers from Mexico.
The Newark Earthworks are the largest complex of geometric earthworks ever built. Consisting of a circle connected to an octagon by a ceremonial road made of two 6’ tall parallel walls, the entire earthworks complex extends over thousands of acres of land. Careful observers of the heavens, indigenous people of this land built a huge earthen octagon aligned it to the sky.
2,000 years ago the People built the earthworks to predict every significant transition during the complex 18.6-year lunar cycle using astronomical, engineering, and mathematical knowledge.
Presenters will be: Sonya Atalay, assistant professor, anthropology, Indiana University; Christine Ballengee-Morris, associate professor, art education, Ohio State University; Davíd Carrasco, Neil Rudenstein Professor of the Study of Latin America, Harvard Divinity School; Susan Tobey Evans, professor, archaeological anthropology, Pennsylvania State University; Sandra Garner, doctoral student, comparative studies, The Ohio State University and graduate research associate, Newark Earthworks Center; Jeff Gill, volunteers services co-coordinator, Newark Earthworks State Memorial; John Hancock, professor, architectural history, University of Cincinnati and director, Center for the Electronic Reconstruction of Historical and Archaeological Sites (CERHAS); Lindsay Jones, professor, comparative studies, The Ohio State University; Bradley Lepper, curator of archaeology, Ohio Historical Society; Lionel Sims, principal lecturer in anthropology, University of East London; and Carol Welsh, director, Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio (NAICCO).
For more information, visit www.OctagonMoonrise.org or call the Newark Earthworks Center at 740.364.9574.