The Newark Earthworks was one of the most magnificent prehistoric Indian sites in the eastern United States and, covering an area two miles square, once was the largest earthworks complex in Ohio. Its main components were the large circle, a square enclosure, and the octagon with connected circle, originally linked by a series of earth walls. Numerous burial mounds and smaller circular enclosures were also associated with the major earthworks. The circles may have been built over the sites of Council Houses where the Hopewell Indians, who built the complex some two thousand years ago, participated in social and religious observances. A map made by Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis, who surveyed the mounds in 1847, served as the basis for this reconstruction, and since that time many of the original earthworks have been destroyed.