Monday, July 18, 2016

Another Old Newspaper Article

 There were no photos accompanying this NY Time article, so I just had to illustrate it myself (although you could use many a photo from this blog to do the same). There are some overlays etc. on this one from 1991 that I never saw before, so I'll just link you up to:

Scholar Looks at Quaint Stone Walls And Sees Pioneers' Garbage Heaps

12 comments :

pwax said...

Thorson is starting to sound desperate.

Curtiss Hoffman said...

But this is from 1991, before a lot of the evidence and claims for Native construction had emerged.

Tim MacSweeney said...

His views haven't really changed that much, despite the evidence and claims.These days he says, "The problem is one of scientific proof...To my mind, the most important research question facing us today is how to sort out the certainty of a tiny bit of pre-historic stonework from the self-evident stonework of the historic era," as he said here, a speech given to a group called NERA, he claims - http://stonewall.uconn.edu/conservation/case-histories/providence-journal/thorsons-keynote-speech-to-nera/
The if/then questions he asks don't adress this one to my satisfaction:
If more than three stone walls end (or begin) with something that resembles a snake head, with an inclusion that resembles an eye, contains what resembles Native American Iconography such as a highly realistic turtle (and all the rest), then maybe a little observational science could determine which cultural group was more likely to have created them

Tim MacSweeney said...

I liked this statement because he almost observes something: "Many of the walls he has studied are too short to corral livestock, he says. Others do not enclose anything, and miles of walls waver in height like the scales on a serpent's back, as though farmers piled rocks haphazardly." I'm not sure how one considers a serpent petroform a haphazard construction - and I include the carefully made zigzag rows of stones that abound around where I live...

Tim MacSweeney said...

And I’d still like to take a look at the stones in the stone wall in Thorson’s backyard since he's declined to take a look at some in mine (or my Mom's): http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2015/07/all-places-i-didnt-go-on-4th-of-july.html

Curtiss Hoffman said...

Anyone who knows science understands that there is no such thing as "scientific proof". There is disproof, but ideally science always leaves itself open to new ideas which may supplement or overthrow older paradigms. All that we can really do is to present the preponderance of evidence. And the preponderance of evidence nowadays - my inventory now has 5,153 sites in it - is pretty heavily in favor of Native construction!

pwax said...

We know Thorson is a poor observer and you are suggesting he does not understand the whole business about "hypotheses". He must be a honey tongued fella.

Anonymous said...

Professor Hoffman,

You are right, nothing can be proved to be true in science, only untrue, and a new theory proposed to replace that shown to be flawed. Yet, I am told by the President that "climate change/global warming" is "settled science", an oxymoron if ever there was one. dc.

Curtiss Hoffman said...

I don't expect politicians to understand the nature of scientific inquiry, but I do expect a scientist like Thorson to.

Tim MacSweeney said...

Thorson to his credit includes the idea of stone walls functioning as firebreaks, although he seems to think it's some sort of coincidence. He brings up some ecological aspects of stone walls but seems to lack an understanding of Traditional Ecological Knowledge when it comes to the Northeast - where every early history of every early town brings up the "burning by Indians:' that managed the Landscape - and elsewhere where the subject is actually studied, such as California or South America. I do find it strange that he has never observed a "snake head at the end of a stone row" or a realistic turtle or two in wall or a mound - he's failing to see a repeated artistic pattern of stacking stones, like at Snake Mtn. and the Track Rock.

Curtiss Hoffman said...

A long-since retired colleague of mine in geology once quipped - of the erratic boulders that are found throughout the New England landscape, "I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't believed it." Prior to the work of Louis Agassiz in the mid-19th century, these were believed to have been deposited by the Great Flood; after that, glaciers became the normative interpretation. Of course, we see at least some of these as having been positioned - or altered and surrounded by other stone structures - by indigenous people, so another paradigm shift is going on.

Tommy Hudson said...

To keep from making some irreversable mistakes, all petroforms should be considered prehistoric, unless absolutely proven otherwise. You would think that the archaeological community, using "best practice" methods that they claim are paramount, would support my previous statement, but one has to remember that their clients are often the very people who would gain from the destruction of said petroforms.