Outside the Great Circle gateway and to the north and east are well-preserved remains of the low embankment walls that once encircled the entire Newark complex with a continuous outline. There seem to be only three entry points, all of them suggesting ceremonial approaches from water. Once inside, the people were channeled from one specialized enclosure to another. Archaeologist Brad Lepper:

I think you could almost view the elements, the different functionally specialized yet integrated elements of this site as components of a gigantic ritual machine. And movement through that site, you know, would have been a way of power flowing through that; or the people moving through it, the pilgrims, the priests, the shamans, moving through that site, would in some ways be re-enacting some fundamental, cosmological cycles.

Dance and procession on specialized ceremonial grounds remain important features of American Indian rituals today.

Low earthen walls encircle the entire complex and seem to channel movement from one geometric figure to the next.