The whole region around the Newark Earthworks was apparently sacred: other earthworks, plus various alignment points are spread throughout the surrounding hills. Across the Licking River, an earthen square 740 feet on a side was attached to a ring and ditch (now lost). Atop a steep wooded hill (visible from the Great Circle parking lot), a big ring with a central mound still stands. Archaeologist Brad Lepper:

There are other mounds and earthworks on many hilltops that surround this area. I think they all somehow relate to a continuous pattern of land use that felt the land was sacred, that added these architectural fixtures to it, that in their minds perhaps only increased the sacredness of it, and channeled it, and put it into these earthen vessels and channeled it down these parallel corridors.