Thanks to the efforts of the Newark Earthworks Center the Great Circle is seeing a return of Native rituals and events. As part of Newark Earthworks Day 2008, after scholars compared the site with Stonehenge and with Teotihuacan in Mexico, the crowds adjourned to a ceremonial dance here. Dr. Dick Shiels tells the story:

We brought ten people from Mexico who are Aztec descedents, and who as a part of their own personal spirituality dance and perform Aztec dances in costume. We went to the Great Circle. And the Aztec dancers led us into that circle and preformed a dance in the middle of it. We think there were roughly 500 of us there when it began to rain. And perhaps a hundred of us stayed through the rain; we got absolutely drenched. But it stopped raining, and the sun came out, and the dancing went on, and we dried off, and it was wonderful. And when it was done the dancers told me: “It was a rain dance.”

In 2008, dancers of Aztec ancestry performed for Newark Earthworks Day audiences inside the Great Circle Earthwork. Photo by Tim Black.