Week 4 (Apr. 8) Brad Lepper – Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks UNESCO World Heritage Site

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Week 4 (Tuesday, April 8, 2025)

1:00pm-3:00pm

Brad Lepper – Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks UNESCO World Heritage Site

Did you know that Ohio is home to eight wonders of the world? The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks UNESCO World Heritage site includes eight separate monumental earthworks that were built by the ancient Indigenous Hopewell culture between about 1 and 400 CE. The sites include the Great Circle and Octagon Earthworks in Newark, the Fort Ancient Earthworks near Lebanon, and the five earthworks that make up Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in and around Chillicothe. To become a World Heritage site, you have to show that your sites have “outstanding universal value,” which means that the natural or cultural importance of the site must transcend a local or even national significance. The story the site has to tell must be a story the world needs to hear. In this program you will learn why these ancient American Indian earthworks were inscribed on the World Heritage List.

About Brad Lepper

Brad Lepper is the Senior Archaeologist for the Ohio History Connection’s World Heritage Program. He earned his Master’s and PhD degrees from the Ohio State University. He is the author of Ohio Archaeology: an illustrated chronicle of Ohio’s ancient American Indian cultures, published in 2005 by Orange Frazer Press, Wilmington, Ohio, which won the Society of American Archaeology’s Public Audience Book Award in 2007.