Fort Ancient hosting World Heritage Week events
Thursday was World Heritage Day, and the Ohio History Connection and its partners at the National Park Service have organized special events through this weekend at the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, Ohio’s first and only UNESCO World Heritage site.
The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks is the collective name for eight examples of monumental landscape architecture built by Native Americans between 1,600 and 2,000 years ago in Licking, Ross and Warren counties. Five of the earthworks sites are managed by the National Park Service, and three are managed by the Ohio History Connection.
This weekend, special events will be held at Fort Ancient Earthworks and Nature Preserve, 6123 Ohio 350, in Oregonia, east of Lebanon.
The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks were inscribed to the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Culture Organization) World
Heritage List on Sept. 19, 2023, by the 21 countries on the World Heritage Committee. There are only about 1,200 World Heritage Sites around the globe, and the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks is just the 25th World Heritage Listing in the U.S.
“We’ve seen a great deal of interest and attendance since the inscription,” said Neil Thompson, Ohio History Connection spokesman. “This network of sites are extraordinary examples of monumental landscape architecture built 2,000 years ago. The scale of human creative genius is enormous.”
Thompson said hilltop enclosure at Fort Ancient covers 110 acres and these sites were constructed for ceremonial purposes. The other sites in the network are geometric earthworks and feature precise steps and angles with solar and lunar alignments. At Fort Ancient, there is an alignment with the summer solstice.
“The precision in these places are absolutely amazing,” he said. “This was built 2,000 years ago using clamshell hoes, sharpened sticks and moving one basket of dirt at a time.”
The National Park Service’s five Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks locations are at Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in and around Chillicothe. The Ohio History Connection’s locations are in Heath, Newark and Oregonia. For details about all eight locations of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, go to hopewellearthworks.org.
Here is the list of activities this weekend at Fort Ancient:
■ Friday, April 19:
Archaeological Tour at 1 p.m. Take an archaeological tour of the grounds of the largest hilltop enclosure in North America.
■ Saturday, April 20:
Gardening and cooking demonstrations from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. all day in the interpretive garden behind the museum.
■ Sunday, April 21: Gardening and cooking demonstrations from noon to 5 p.m. in the interpretive garden behind the museum.