[Aztlan] FORT ANCIENT WOODHENGE

[michael ruggeri]

'Woodhenge' at Fort Ancient raises interest in ritual past

Tuesday,  May 1, 2007 3:25 AM
BY BRADLEY T. LEPPER

During a remote-sensing survey of the Fort Ancient Earthworks in  
2005, Jarrod Burks of Ohio Valley Archaeological Consultants  
discovered a circular pattern in the soil that stretched nearly 200  
feet in diameter.

Fort Ancient is a massive earthwork in Warren County that was built  
more than 2,000 years ago by the Hopewell culture.
Robert Riordan, an anthropology professor at Wright State University,  
directed excavations there in 2006 and last month completed a report  
on his initial explorations of the circles.
Dubbed the "Moorehead Circle" by Riordan in honor of pioneering  
archaeologist Warren K. Moorehead, the area was a "woodhenge,"  
defined by a double ring of posts.
The outer ring consisted of large posts about 9 inches in diameter  
set about 30 inches apart in slip trenches filled with rock. The  
inner ring had similar-size posts set about 15 feet inside the outer  
ring.
Riordan estimates that the outer ring would have held more than 200  
posts, each 10 to 15 feet tall. Inner posts likely were shorter.
At the center of the circle was a
2.5-foot-deep pit that was 15 feet long by 13 feet wide and filled  
with red, burned soil. The pit was ringed by a shallow trough in  
which large timbers of red oak had been burned. Excavators found  
little ash, so the burned soil must have been brought in.
A radiocarbon date on charcoal from a remnant trace of a post  
suggests it was built between 40 BC and AD 130. Burned timber  
fragments from the pit were dated AD 250 to AD 420.
The different ages suggest to Riordan that a "sequence of ceremonial  
events" took place at this location. The two rings of posts and the  
pit might be related, or they might represent three separate rituals.
With less than 5 percent of the circle investigated, Riordan warns,  
our understanding of it remains tentative.
"We avidly look forward to subsequent field seasons, new data and  
altered perspectives," he wrote.
More information about the
excavation of the Moorehead Circle can be found on the Ohio  
Historical Society's archaeology blog:
www.ohio-archaeology.blogspot.com/.

Bradley T. Lepper is curator of archaeology at the Ohio Historical  
Society.

blepper at ohiohistory.org




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