Inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023, the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks encompass eight ancient Indigenous earthwork complexes in Ohio. Built between 1,600 and 2,000 years ago along tributaries of the Ohio River, they represent extraordinary achievements in engineering, geometry, and astronomy. This gorgeous Smithsonian book incorporates Indigenous perspectives and quotations alongside more than 250 large-format photographs, maps, LiDAR images, and paintings, plus an index and further reading. Organized into three parts, it provides historical background, examines the sites, and considers their broader significance, including Tribal involvement, collaborative management, ceremonial objects, and global importance.
Among the world’s largest geometrically shaped earthworks, the complexes feature monumental embankment walls and gateways enclosing vast spaces. Some also contain mounds and burials. Research identifies them as ceremonial gathering places, evident in their enormous scale, elaborate construction, formal precision, astronomical alignments, ceremonial deposits, and relative lack of domestic refuse. Although other earthworks survive across Ohio and beyond, the book focuses on eight UNESCO-designated components within three principal clusters: Newark’s Octagon Earthworks and Great Circle Earthworks; Hopeton Earthworks, Mound City Group, High Bank Works, Hopewell Mound Group, and Seip Earthworks near Chillicothe; and Fort Ancient. These monumental landscapes incorporate precise geometric figures and sculpted hilltops, some aligned to solar and lunar cycles.
Rather than identifying a single group or culture, “Hopewell” describes a widespread religious and ceremonial movement whose cosmological ideas, symbols, and practices were adopted by communities with diverse lifeways. The Hopewell Interaction Sphere extended across much of eastern North America. Participants brought materials from distant regions—including mica from the southern Appalachians, copper from the Great Lakes, obsidian from the Yellowstone region, and marine shell from the Gulf Coast—to Ohio, where artisans transformed them into ceremonial objects. The book offers fascinating insights into the latest research on these ancient masterworks.
