Monday, February 07, 2011

Another Museum Recognizes Stone Piles (and something fun to poke around on online)

Formed rock pile at the Longswamp site

Yesterday I visited the new Sigal Museum in Easton, Pennsylvania, at the suggestion of Fred Werkheiser. I was pleased to find an excellent full-room exhibit on the Lenape that included a photo of the above structure from what we've been calling the Oley Hills Site. On the sign about "sacred sites" they call it the Longswamp site, which locates it more accurately.

In the ten years since I was introduced to the rock piles and their mystique, things have certainly come a long way! There was even a CD, containing a power point presentation on the sites, for sale in the museum gift shop. I couldn't get it just then, but I hope to soon.

In connection with something else, I've been going through old papers from 2001, and I came across an email (That was back when I used to print out emails I wanted to keep. Wise, as it turns out.) I was copied in on, in which it is suggested that people interested in this topic should browse the reports of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian. In particular the 1890-1891 issue is said to be relevant.

These are now online, as perhaps some of you may know. For those who don't, it's something to peruse should we get another storm or something else that allows you time for fiddling. The email recommends pages 690 to 701, but I imagine there's more to be found. Anyway, here's a link to the introduction of that year. You can use the table of contents to move around. Just click on the page number. Enjoy!

P.S.: I couldn't access the link that Norman Muller gives in the comments, but he has excellent articles on the Oley Hills/Longswamp site here and here.

20 comments :

pwax said...

Thanks for this post Geophile. It reminds me of a topic I am a bothered bye which I want to rant about:

I feel that when mentioning the Oley Hills site, it is important to note that Norman Muller wrote articles about this site before any museum got interested in it. I seem to recall Fred Werkheiser introduced Norman to the site but Norman was the first (and only I think) person to map and document the place. He did the land deed research, he examined the geology, he took the photographs and he did the basic footwork. I wonder: Did the museum mention his early scholarship and research?

On a more general topic, it seems that what is done on-line is easily ignored by paper-based agencies. Some web pages make the same mistake - lots of scholarship about what was written in the 1800's but no mention of active online publication.

It is a goal of this blog to give credit where it is due; whether academic [unlikely] or amateur [very likely]. As rock piles become more mainstream I expect museums and academics to step up and act like they always knew about this stuff. I have no intention of letting that happen without making some kind of fuss. So we keep the perspective that it was clear-eyed amateurs, ignoring conventional thinking, who noticed and documented these sites and who got the Indians to come out and acknowledge them. I want to do everything I can to ensure this part of the story does not vanish.

Geophile said...

Well, you are absolutely right. There's sort of a lineage here: Mavor and Dix to Mark Strohmeyer to Fred Werkheiser to Norman Muller. Not that Mavor and Dix or Mark Strohmeyer ever saw Oley Hills, but their work and the communication between them--Mark knew and often wrote back and forth with James Mavor--was what enabled Fred, Mark's close friend, to start seeing, recognizing and exploring the Pennsylvania sites.

Fred also passed that knowledge on to others, some of whom were involved in creating the display in the Sigal Museum. Norman, as I've said before on this blog, has been a very important link in the chain. You, too, giving the topic and the photos an online presence. I like to think that even my little articles and photos on the Megalithic Portal and Wikipedia may have reached some people. Meanwhile, there's NEARA and whole sets of people in New England and elsewhere who deserve a great deal of credit for finding sites and speaking out. Herman Bender is another name that comes to mind.

The persistence of the amateur voices is what has prevailed. In the case of both the Sigal Museum and the Penn Museum, though, I think we must acknowledge that nothing would have gone on display in either place without the help and cooperation of the Lenape people.

Geophile said...

Meant to add that that help and cooperation was largely secured by the friendship between Bob Redhawk and Fred Werkheiser.

theseventhgeneration said...

Great information and post!

Geophile said...

Thanks, Kathy. I've been going through my old papers and not only do I have notes from my early visits to the sites (it started as a sidenote to a writing assignment), but I have documents like letters and emails by Mark Strohmeyer and Werkheiser, plus a copy of the talk Mavor gave to NEARA when Strohmeyer died, which includes passages about the stone work written by Strohmeyer. Great stuff. It all makes me wish even more that I'd come into this while Mark was still alive so I could have met him. He was funny, bitter, brilliant...and able to stand up to the mockery his stand on the stone work brought him from his fellow archaeologists. That stand, that the sites were built by and in some cases still used by the Indians, is now vindicated, but he didn't live to see it. I have other interesting things, too. Hadn't looked through it for years.

One thing that's changed recently is that while archaeologists' speculations like "German Indians" used to drive people like Fred crazy, we now know that, in PA at least, it really was the Germans who married with the Indians and their descendants who most often kept the traditions, including visits to the sites, alive.

Unfortunately I put lots more info and conversations with people on floppy disk to keep forever. They'll keep forever, I guess, but I have no way to access them.

pwax said...

By the way, thanks also for the great rock pile photo.

theseventhgeneration said...

8" or 5.25" floppy? I still have a tower with a 5.25" drive on it, but got rid of my older IBM (with the 8" drive) years ago. I wish I still had it, but it just took up too much room!

Yes, that's a great photo!

Geophile said...

Thanks--the Oley Hills/Longswammp site is or was awesome and has many other great features similar to that. If only it could be bought and preserved. Right now we don't know if any of it is even still there, unless Norman knows more than I do (always and in every way likely!).

Geophile said...

I want to correct myself on one thing above--Norman Muller knew and spoke with Strohmeyer first, before he met Fred. I have never really interviewed Norman the way I did Fred, but I think that's how it was. Then Mark introduced Norman to Fred, who showed him the Longswamp site.

Norman, if you read this--how did you meet Mark?

Anonymous said...

I never met Mark, but spoke with him several or more times on the phone before he died. Somewhere among the hundreds of papers I've collected is one by Mark on the above-ground stone chamber in Estabrook Woods, Concord, MA, which Mark researched.

Tim MacSweeney said...

Nancy: I can't remember if it was Staples or Radio Shack where I got a little floppy drive with a USB thingy on it - inexpensive too.
If you can't find one I'll ship mine to you!!

Geophile said...

Thanks, Tim--I'll look into that. Was thinking of firing up a very old computer we have put away but this would be better, more chance I could convert the files into something intelligible on the computer I'm using now.

Norman said...

I have not returned to the Oley Hills (Longswamp) site since it was purchased by an Italian family quite a few years ago. According to information I received, the present owners didn't want any visitors. Last year the owner's house burned to the ground, and I don't know whether the owner rebuilt, or what. I do know he was in the process of trying to sell the land and house, but at a very steep price (500K). Fred tried to get the Archaeological Conservancy interested in the site about eight years ago, but they sided with the opinion of an archaeologist, who claimed the stonework was the work of a German farmer.

Norman

pwax said...

There is a cause worth promoting: the purchase of Oley Hills.

Norman said...

By the way, my article on the Oley Hills site can be found on the NEARA website, and also at http://rock-piles.com/oleyhill.pdf.

Geophile said...

Thanks, Norman. I should have linked that. Don't you have more than one?

Geophile said...

Peter, that would be so great! If it's still there. We can only hope.

Norman said...

All my articles, either online or published in journals, have been compiled by Larry Harrop at: www.rock-piles.com/muller.html.

Tim MacSweeney said...

There's an expression in the informal German dialect up in the Black Forest where my mother's parents were born, used as we use "I owe you a favor" in America, that translates to "I'll put a stone in your garden."

Geophile said...

Thanks, Tim. I like that. Here's an interesting bit about stone and mind: Under the Influence of Stones