单项选择题

If you didn’t know any better, you might mistake the Newark Earthworks in southern Ohio for the product of some giant heaven spirit who went crazy with an Etch A Sketch. The Earthworks are actually a series of huge geometric mounds that anthropologists believe were created two millennia ago by ancestors of Native Americans called the Hopewell people. The most significant feature still standing is known as the Octagon (八角广场), which has 550-foot-long earthen walls and a footprint big enough to hold four Roman Colosseums (古罗马的圆形大剧院). The structure is connected, via two parallel embankments, to a perfect, 20-acre circle. Together the two shapes form a sophisticated astronomical observatory—scientists have discovered that the structure is precisely aligned with the 18.6-year lunar cycle’s northernmost moonrise. The residents of Newark will tell you that it is also precisely aligned with the ninth fairway at the private Moundbuilders Country Club.
The Earthworks are a National Historic Landmark, and they are under consideration for the UNESCO World Heritage list of cultural and natural wonders. But if you want to see them well, you’re too late. During the golf season, everyone but club members is kept out, except on four visiting days. Let’s not condemn the club so fast. The club, which since 1910 has occupied the Octagon and covered all maintenance costs, is widely credited with preventing the place from being plowed under. The issue is how to accommodate nonmembers who want more access, especially for Native American ceremonial purposes.
Most visitors end up seeing only a tiny part of the Octagon from a small observation deck. Or they can follow the asphalt cart path that winds past the swimming pool, an old tennis court, and a parking lot to reach a chain-link fence through which, off in the distance, they can glimpse the loaf-shaped mound known as the Observatory. Several years ago the financially strapped Ohio Historical Society, which owns the Earthworks, extended the club’s lease until 2078. If the World Heritage site nomination goes through, tourism would undoubtedly jump. That would certainly put more pressure on the club and historical society. One frequently suggested scenario is for the federal government to buy out the club and turn the Newark Earthworks into a national park.
Some people simply refuse to he intimidated by men wearing spiky (尖的) shoes and pastel (淡色的) shirts. Cherokee elder Barbara Crandell has climbed the Observatory to pray for more than two decades—but not once, the octogenarian is proud to point out, when the golf course has dictated. She goes when her heart calls. A few years ago, after Crandell, with the aid of a cane, made her way to the top, club officials showed up and asked her to leave. When she refused, she was arrested and later convicted of trespassing. Friends raised money and paid off her $883 fine and court costs in Sacagawea dollar coins.
According to the first paragraph, the Newark Earthworks are ______.