Ohio’s World Heritage Site: the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks
Eight earthwork complexes in southern Ohio, built up to two thousand years ago, became the United States’ twenty-fifth World Heritage Site in 2023.
Ohio has one UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it is not a building. It is a group of earthworks raised by Indigenous people between roughly 1,600 and 2,000 years ago.
The National Park Service states that the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks “include eight locations in Ohio that are managed by the National Park Service and Ohio History Connection”, and that they were “built between 1,600 and 2,000 years ago by people now referred to as the Hopewell Culture”. The designation was made on September 19, 2023, and the Park Service records the site as “the nation’s 25th”.
The eight are the Mound City Group, the Hopewell Mound Group, Seip Earthworks, High Bank Earthworks and Hopeton Earthworks — all within Hopewell Culture National Historical Park at Chillicothe — together with the Great Circle Earthworks and the Octagon Earthworks at Heath and Newark, and the Fort Ancient Earthworks at Oregonia.
What distinguishes them is geometry. The enclosures take the form of squares, circles and octagons laid out to a consistent precision across a wide area, which implies both surveying technique and sustained astronomical observation. They were not fortifications; they were ceremonial.
Ohio law recognised part of this long before UNESCO did. Section 5.073 of the Ohio Revised Code designates “The Newark earthworks in Licking county, which are geometric earthen enclosures constructed during the prehistoric time period” as the official prehistoric monument of the state. Section 5.075 adopts the Adena pipe as the official state artifact, describing it as “a prehistoric effigy pipe that was discovered in 1901 by William C. Mills within a burial mound near Chillicothe and that was created by the ancient Adena culture from native Ohio pipestone”.
Several of the component sites are open to visitors, but access arrangements differ between the National Park Service and Ohio History Connection properties. Check the managing body’s own page for the site you intend to visit before travelling.
Read the National Park Service page: https://www.nps.gov/hocu/learn/historyculture/hopewell-ceremonial-earthworks.htm
See Ohio History Connection’s World Heritage pages: https://www.ohiohistory.org/visit/special-attractions/world-heritage-site/