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Around 100 CE in southern Ohio, a remarkable cultural florescence produced architecture, art, mathematics, and astronomy within an egalitarian, peaceful environment.

A new GIS rendition of the Seal Barnes Earthworks.

One tends to look at these structures as static, something in a field gradually fading away. It is important to see each of these structures as a process in a landscape, a landscape of use over hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

The geometric earthworks in eastern North America during the Middle Woodland period reflect a deep mathematical language built into a landscape. This is from a culture that had no written language. To parse out this mathematical language, tools must be constructed to understand just what is being said.

Sonoran Desert [Author Image] "Because the horizon bounds the viewer inside a wall-like vertical visual barrier, it commonly takes on deep cultural significance. As the point at which the land breaks visual contact with more distant places, in traditional societies the horizon often symbolizes the boundary between known and unknown, safe and dangerous, familiar and foreign" [Bernardini et al. 2013] Unless asleep or unconscious, human visual perception is a continuous process.

"A singular work of art occurs on the top of a high hill, standing in the rear of the town of Piketon, and overlooking it, which it may not be out of place to mention here."

A graded way is a walled pathway built through two levels of river terrace.