The ancient American Indian Hopewell culture is best known for the array of monumental earthworks they built in the valleys of central and southern Ohio between AD 1 and 400. These architectural masterpieces included earthworks built in precise geometric shapes, such as Newark’s Great Circle and Octagon Earthworks, but also hilltop enclosures with shapes largely determined by the contours of the hills on which they were situated.
The Fort Ancient Earthworks in Warren County is the largest and best preserved of the Hopewell hilltop enclosures and it, together with Newark’s Great Circle and Octagon Earthworks and the earthworks that make up Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, are being considered for nomination to the UNESCO World Heritage List as the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks.
More:Shiels: World Heritage for the Hopewell Culture Earthworks
Fort Ancient consists of three-and-a-half miles of earthen walls that vary in height from three to 23 feet. These walls enclose the top of a large bluff that overlooks the Little Miami River. The earthwork has two main parts, the so-called North and South forts, and a narrow set of walls connecting the two, known as the Middle Fort.
In spite of its name, Fort Ancient was not a fort. Ditches that held water run alongside most walls, but they are located inside the walls rather than outside where a defensive moat would have been placed. In addition, there are more than 60 openings, or gateways, in the walls which would have made the “fort” difficult to defend.
Fort Ancient now is understood to have been mainly a place of ceremony, though since there are very few burial mounds at the site, mortuary ceremonies don’t seem to have been as important here as they were at many of the geometric earthworks.
Four small stone-covered mounds in the North Fort, which did not contain burials, are arranged in a perfect square 512 feet on a side. Standing at the westernmost mound, you can view the summer solstice sunrise as well as the maximum and minimum moonrises through three consecutive gateways in the eastern enclosure wall. Fort Ancient, therefore, like Newark’s Octagon Earthworks, was linked to the rhythms of the cosmos.
Recent research has revealed the remains of a “woodhenge” in the North Fort that consisted of three concentric rings of large posts. The outermost circle was about 200 feet in diameter. At the center of the circle, there was a central basin in which the Hopewell had built a low mound of red clay – perhaps as an altar. Dr. Robert Riordan, the archaeologist who has been studying the site for the last 16 years, named it the Moorehead Circle to honor the early archaeologist who worked at Fort Ancient and who is largely responsible for preserving the earthworks. Riordan thinks the Moorehead Circle was the ceremonial heart of Fort Ancient. After the last ceremony was performed here, the Hopewell decommissioned the site by removing the wooden posts and burying it beneath layers of gravel hauled up from the bed of the Little Miami River.
Six-hundred or so years later, a different group of American Indians established a large village and cemetery in the South Fort. Early archaeologists incorrectly assumed the villagers were the builders of Fort Ancient. Following the convention of naming newly identified cultures after the places they were first recognized, they called it the Fort Ancient culture. So not only is the Fort Ancient Earthworks not a fort, but the Fort Ancient culture didn’t build them.
The Fort Ancient Earthworks share important similarities with the geometric earthworks of the Hopewell culture, but there are important differences as well. By combining Fort Ancient with Newark’s Great Circle and Octagon Earthworks and the earthworks of Hopewell Culture National Park into a single World Heritage nomination, we can tell a more complete story about this amazing American Indian culture and gain a fuller appreciation of the scope and grandeur of their architectural achievements.
Brad Lepper is an Archaeology Curator at the Ohio History Connection
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