[Cross-posted to Revise & Dissent]
Newark Earthworks. Photo by kind permission of robpg
The Newark Earthworks are a huge array of geometrical patterns built by the Hopewell people some time between AD 100 and AD 400. Above is a photo of a small fraction of the Newark Earthworks. Unless you have an aircraft you can only photograph a small fraction at any time because the site is huge, covering four square miles. To be truthful you’d probably want an aircraft anyway because there’s another problem. The site is now the golf course of the Moundbuilders Country Club, and there’s a lot more to golf than hitting a small ball with a stick. There’s the stroll around well-maintained parkland. There’s also the exclusivity. Some clubs take the idea of golf as a non-contact sport to extremes, avoiding contact with swathes of society. This doesn’t seem to be the case at the Moundbuilders Country Club, who seem happy to grant full access to the course to anyone willing to pay $5,800*. However,
some people are unwilling to pay the rate for full access or even the $1250 for limited access which, according to a report in Indian Country Today, is leading to friction between golfers and non-members and even arrests.
Does it have to be like that?
In the UK heritage sites can be owned by a variety of bodies. There’s the government bodies like the National Trust and English Heritage, EHSNI, Historic Scotland and CADW. There are also plenty of sites in private hands. Vindolanda is owned by the Vindolanda Trust. Quite often farms will come on the market with associated burial mounds or stone circles on the land. At Auglish the site is well preserved enough that you can see quartz embedded in the ground, presumably from prehistoric times. I can’t see that putting it in National care would preserve it any better. Equally I can’t see any a priori reason why a golf course is necessarily a bad thing. It isn’t the worst fate that can befall a site. Many mounds in Ohio have been destroyed, but the Mounderbuilders Country Club still have an impressive looking site. If you read the history of the golf course [PDF] you can see there was work to protect some of the mounds. Where it gets a little odd is that not only has this attitude changed, it also turns out it’s not their site.
The mounds are owned by the Ohio Historical Society, and are leased to the club. Initially the lease had clauses insisting on access and preservation. These clauses have been removed, which from a British point of view is a bit silly but not catastrophic. While they’re hardly likely to demolish the site, they could close access to the public. Clearly laws are slightly different in America, because it seems the historical remains are poorly protected. As Laura, the Classical Archaeologist, shows they are indeed remodelling the site. As for access even the OHS couldn’t get the access they wanted for the public for an event last year.
You could even ask if America has a pre-colonial past. Not everyone thinks so. www.jamestown2007.org is “The official website of America’s 400th anniversary”. Following simple mathematics 400 years ago now America was -1 years old. Whatever happened on Turtle Island before 1607, it wasn’t American history. It does raise a problem for people who trace their past back to this time. Does this mean the peoples living in the area before 1607 aren’t Americans but pre-Americans? Are sites dating from this time unAmerican? Do current occupants of lands have a duty of care to the remains of previous inhabitants? If they do how should they be enforced?
It’s a timely problem because this year the OHS is hoping to hold an event to watch the most northerly moonrise at the site. There’s a site at www.octagonmoonrise.org, but this might be all that people see. In recent days the event has been cancelled and re-instated. A similar event scheduled for last year was cancelled at the last minute due to an unfortunate clash with bad weather and a Monte Carlo evening.
There is a tendency to view conquests as events when they are processes. In 1607 the conquest of North America started, but it was a lengthy process. Does the controversy at Newark suggest that even 400 years later control of the land by the immigrants is still incomplete and still contested? Is the grip on the territory still so tenuous that an event which happens a few nights every nineteen years cannot be permitted if it affects golf? Or are prehistoric remains now a thing of the past?
About has an article at on the earthworks and you can read about the Hopewell people at Classical Archaeologist in Hopewell: Origins, Artistry & Culture.
*Just over 28 weeks work if you earn the minimum wage in Ohio. You can have limited access with just 6 weeks of work.
The views above are the author’s own and not necessarily those of HNN or GMU or the University of Leicester.
