Wednesday, May 15, 9am-7pm, Ohio Union, Cartoon Room 1, 1739 N. High St.

The Newark Earthworks are the largest set of geometric earthen enclosures in the world. Honored as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023, the entire Newark Earthworks originally encompassed more than four square miles.

It was built between CE 1 to CE 400 by the ancestors of contemporary American Indian peoples who are identified today as the Hopewell Culture/Era. This architectural wonder was part cathedral, part university, part social space, part cemetery, and part astronomical observatory. Through their genius, hard work, and collaborative efforts, these ancestors inscribed upon the land a remarkable wealth of indigenous knowledge relating to geometry and astronomy encoded in the design of these earthworks.

The Octagon Earthworks are aligned to the four moonrises and four moonsets that mark the limits of a complicated 18 year and 219 day-long cycle north and south on the eastern horizon.

This Gathering is built upon the hard work of organizers and attendees of previous “Mounds and Memory” workshops and the goal of this Gathering is to reunite participants in previous workshops, including representatives of the Rainy River First Nations (Ontario), the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Nation, The Ohio State University, the University of Toronto, and Harvard University. to share and celebrate these “monuments of the Ohio River Valley.”

Hosted by OSU Center for the Study of Religion and OSU Newark Earthworks Center.