I
was honored to be able to visit the Great Circle with my good friend Pat
Mason. Newark is to Pat what Spanish Hill is to me...Here we are in the
fall of 2006 walking around the embankment of the Great Circle:
About the Great Circle at Newark, Ohio by Pat Mason
In
the 12th Annual Report of the Smithsonian
Institution, Cyrus Thomas described the Great Circle as
“undoubtedly one of the best preserved ancient monuments of our
country; it is uninjured by the plow and trees of the original
forest are still standing on it.” If you visit the Great Circle
today you will be able to see the last remnants of the trees
that were growing there when the Newark Earthworks was
discovered by pioneer Isaac Stadden in 1800.
The average
diameter of the Great Circle (which is not a perfect circle, but
it’s close) is a bit under 1200 feet. The enclosure covers
thirty acres. The height of the mound measured from ground level
varies between five and fourteen feet. A deep ditch, varying in
depth from eight to thirteen feet lines the interior of the
mound. It is thought that this ditch once held water.
In the center
of the Great Circle is a mound named Eagle Mound because it is
shaped like a bird in flight or the footprint of a bird. It is
one of the few effigy mounds found in Ohio. Upon excavation by Emerson Greenman in 1928 a large
rectangular building with walls on each side extending outward
at forty-degree angles was revealed by a pattern of postmolds.
The placement of the postmolds gave one the impression that the
building was in the shape of a bird. The structure housed a
large clay basin. - Patricia Mason, 2006
The Great Circle is owned by the Ohio Historical Society. It is now a
State Memorial.Hang onto your seat for this video - -the
way I move the camera around in parts of this video might make you feel as if
you are on a rollercoaster! (sorry! - I promise to try to do better next
time!)
The Great Circle
at Newark, Ohio
Use the following links below to learn more about the different types of
man-made mounds:
Types
of Man-Made Mounds
Man-made mounds are mounds that were made from the ground up and fall
into four basic shapes or categories. Conical mounds, Effigy mounds,
Temple Mounds and Geometric (usually linear) mounds. Use the following
Links to learn more.
Conical Mounds - look like
pyramids except that they are rounded. They, just as the great
pyramids, were built in honor of some special shaman or king, and
are in fact burial sites for them as well.
Effigy Mounds
- are shaped like animals and or spirits, and were believed to have
ceremonial, navigational and calendar-like purposes. It is known
that many of these align with the stars and could have been used to
predict solstices, and even eclipses.
Temple Mounds -
were mounds that either were man-made or "truncated" natural hills.
Structures (many times temples) were placed upon the flattened top
and were considered to be "living spaces" for shamans or their
leaders and their families.
Geometric-Shaped
Mounds - were usually circular, square, or linear in shape, and
were thought to have alot of the same uses as the effigy mounds, but
sometimes (like the Newark site above) were believed to be created
together to build ceremonial & observatory inside large complexes.
To learn more about the people who built the
mounds, use the following links:
