Hinkelman: My mission to learn and share the past and present of the Newark Earthworks
I grew up in Northeast Ohio not knowing earthworks were created on the land that became the nearby park I hiked, or the campground where I spent nearly every weekend with my family, and less than five miles from where I took my first archaeology class as an undergraduate.
The marks of multiple American Indian groups and cultures who lived on this land for thousands of years before Ohio became a state still exist on the landscape.
While I recall learning briefly about mound building cultures and American Indians in the context of the fur trade around the Great Lakes in grade school, I do not recall until almost 15 years later learning that my state has the largest concentration of Hopewell Earthworks in the whole world and that the footprints of many of those earthworks are larger than that of the Pyramid of Giza and the Colosseum in Rome! When I was young, I thought archaeology only happened in faraway places, but in fact, I could study great civilizations less than three hours from my hometown. How did I not know?
What I know now is that these earthworks are important. They are sacred sites, built as a shared labor of devotion by American Indians thousands of years ago and stewarded by the descendants of American Indians tribes that continue to honor these places today. They are sites that show the lasting marks that humans can make on our landscapes. They are places that embody why preservation is important for our ability to continue to learn about the past in order to create a future that is well informed and all the richer for it. These earthworks are places to learn and grow, whether that be in knowledge, wonder, curiosity, appreciation or all of the above. Personally, I think every Ohioan should know about them; don’t be like younger me.
Eight Hopewell Ceremonial earthwork sites are nominated to be on the UNESCO World Heritage list and stand to achieve well deserved world recognition as monuments of Outstanding Universal Value. That is something to be immensely proud of as an Ohioan. After learning in depth about Ohio’s past in my undergraduate archaeology course, I’ve made it a goal to learn more about the history of the land that I call my home and the peoples, American Indians, that played, prayed, and shaped this land thousands of years before me.
The more that I learn, the more I grow prouder that I have the privilege to live in a place so filled with history. I want to share it with everyone I meet, and so I do! As an interpreter of these sites, my mission is to continue to learn about these amazing places, and views and perspectives of the living indigenous peoples that hold them dear, and to share my knowledge with visitors all over the world who visit these monuments. As your own knowledge of these earthworks grows, I hope you will consider taking on that duty too!
Sarah Hinkelman is the site manager of the Newark Earthworks and a former Park Guide at Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Chillicothe. She is also pursuing her doctoral degree in Anthropology at Ohio State University.
This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Hinkelman: Sharing the past and present of the Newark Earthworks
