The following includes comments and email from Jame Gage. I thought it would be worth promoting this for discussion.
"It seems to me that the rock pile research & preservation community would benefit from a formal declaration of principles, facts, philosophy, and general statement of objectives (i.e. preservation, science based research, cultural respect, theories based upon facts not political agenda, etc). In short a document equivalent to the USET Resolution but one for the rock pile community. A document of this nature is needed to serve as alternative to published statements by Gungywamp Society and the Mass. Historical Commission which are proving to be destructive rather constructive. Such a document should be largely positive in nature emphasizing education, preservation, respect, cooperation and a call to action (rather than focusing current politics.)"
AND
"Maybe a "resolution" format with the "whereas" and "therefores" is not appropriate. What I meant was some sort of formal statement of facts and principles regarding stone structures, one which acknowledges them as Native American rather than declaring them to be the work of farmers. We are at a critical junction politically and academically where the old academic paradigm is crumbling. There is a need for a sense of vision and clarity to define the purpose and the future course of this field of research and its continuing preservation efforts. Whether such statement will have any impact or not, the discussion of such an statement would be beneficial to the field."
James
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This is about rock piles and stone mound sites in New England. A balance is needed between keeping them secret and making them public. Also arrowheads, stone tools and other surface archaeology.
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Who would such a statement be for?
ReplyDeleteI do not see this "community" as having much visibility outside of itself; so such statements would be for ourselves and would be like preaching to the choir. Why bother?
I would be glad if this community was larger than I realize and would be glad if such statements could make a difference.
I would like to see some kind of relatively concise document that would clearly make the case for a Native American origin for some rock piles, walls and other structures. I think if there was a document that contained the best evidence for prehistoric aboriginal origin for some of these things and stressed a need for preservation and further research it could serve as a kind of easy rebuttal for the persistent claims that Indians did not build with stone, a claim that continues to be repeated not only on the Internet but in print in many places. Without even getting in to any conjecture about the nature or purpose of rock piles, it would be easy to simply cite existing archaeological evidence for prehistoric stone structures and some of the historic evidence for Indian piles. This could be sent to newspapers, historical societies, town councils, etc. as rock pile sites are being discussed to help at least give a jumping-off point for further discussion. It couldn't hurt, certainly.
ReplyDeleteSince rock piles are not thought of as archaeological significant.. yet.
ReplyDeleteI feel like a modern Indiana Jones on a discovery mission. Every rock pile is a new unrecorded discovery; we are basically pioneers of these undiscovered sites. This is better than living in Egypt! I find it fascinating that these sites aren’t recognized as Indian history. It’s almost comical. Yes, there should be a document to point the way..
Keith
OK, I am starting to see what you are talking about.
ReplyDeleteBellantoni's name was brought up recently. I found a statement by him concerning cairns at Killingworth. He concluded that 27 of them had, "cultural significance." I think these guys intentionally play both sides of the fence.
ReplyDeleteRock pile study has a long way to go. Ideally there would be some criteria that could be used to determine the likelihood that any given site is Indian in origin. It would also be helpful to try to establish the age of these sites and if in fact they are still being built. And of course it would be nice to have a more complete understanding of the original purpose of these sites. It has been put forward that some piles at some sites may represent grave markers but archaeologists will state that rock piles have not been associated with known Indian burial sites that have been excavated. There is a lot of work to be done here but what I think is important now, as a first step, is simply to establish as clearly as possible that prehistoric and historic Indians built stone structures and that this fact is well supported by archaeological and historic evidence. I have seen some work done in this area mostly with regard to specific sites but I have not seen a clear yet comprehensive document that lays out the case for an Indian origin of rock pile and wall sites in general (of course it is possible that something like this exists but I am not aware of it).
ReplyDeleteThere's also supposed to be a lack of Late Woodland Village Sites:
ReplyDeleteSee: "Unique at" http://friendsofthefalls.blogspot.com/
The responses are both encouraging as well as informative. All of the ideas presented here are extremely valuable. I will begin drafting a document which includes all of these thoughts. Anyone interested in being put on the list to review and comment on a the draft copy please sent me an email.
ReplyDeleteJames Gage
www.StoneStructures.org
I have written an article about stone mound investigations in the South that will be published in the next NEARA Journal. In it, I explain that Southern archaeologists have made considerable strides in the investigation of stone mounds and their dating, and I point out how we here in the Northeast can learn from them.
ReplyDeletePerhaps a statement from those of us who read Peter's blog can also include some of the points I raise in the article.
a properly annotated list of sources and citations for evidence of Native American stone work would run in excess of 30 pages. A full list in pdf format should be made available in due time. However, for purposes of this document a small selection of sources should suffice to make the point. I am open to suggestions as to what to include ...
ReplyDeleteI anticipate we will need to create a series of core documents including the above mentioned comprehensive compendium of evidence. Judging by Norman's remarks, there seems to be a pressing need for an open letter to New England archaeological community addressing a number of important issues. I also foresee the need for a simply FAQ for property owners with stone structures (one that is a bit more accurate and helpful then the current MHC FAQ webpage). This could be developed into a pamphlet that could be distributed.
I believe the strongest argument we can make that stone piles are Indian is the demonstration of their purpose, their design. I feel this must be intrinsic to the rock piles and the sites.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I wish I was wrong, I don't believe we will ever have enough information for that, Peter.
ReplyDeleteWe're talking about an activity that was spiritual -- beyond even abstract thought -- generally undertaken by a privileged clan who guarded their secrets pre-contact, and then became severely repressed post-contact. Furthermore, such activities were regularly subjected to influence from outsiders, and often evolved based on variables such as dreams or visions.
So I don't think purpose is at all the way to go. I think establishing unmistakable patterns across a wide culture area is important. I also believe making a strong historical connection between Indians and stonework (which isn't hard, I've got most of the work done if anyone wants to help me make it cogent.
I once put up a HUGE list of references. But, quite frankly, I was concerned with someone else using them for commercial purposes. I don't go for that. I don't mind giving freely to the community, but don't take my hard work and sell a book.
ReplyDeleteI believe rock piles are an expression of scientific ideas as well as religious ones. Scientific principles can be decoded. If you believe rock piles are entirely religious, ou would not look for a pattern or logic to it. So there you have the difference in our approaches.
ReplyDeleteWhat sorts of scientific principles are found in Native American stonework?
ReplyDeleteSky watching must have been pretty quantitative. Predicting eclipses, or more routine celestial events is science.
ReplyDeleteBut also the way I see quartz, water, view, and structure all blended together at these sites suggests, to me, a kind physics or physical reasoning behind them. (Norman will recall reporting on a boulder connected to a ring of rocks with a quartz connection.) This physical reasoning would not have been much like Anglo-European science and would probably be ridiculed as science in that context but that does not mean the practicioners of this science were not systematic and coherent in their own way.
For example: JimP made a fascinating suggestion that [paraphrasing] quartz could have simply brought its own spiritual qualities into a structure. This makes me think of a night light generating a warm glow in the hallway at night. It is a reasonably way of thinking about it. But I do not believe it is right, and the way quartz is placed in a structure is, I think, too specific to fit that generic use pattern. [By the way, I had an extended conversation about quartz with Doug Harris, over the course of several walks in the woods. At the time, I was promoting the idea of quartz having certain intrinsic characteristics that were being added to the pile. Finally in frustration at my getting it wrong, Doug told me explicitly that quartz would be used to pass along or amplify the characteristics of something else and, specifically, that quartz did not have its own characteristics.]
To deny, at the outset, the possibility of understanding site architecture, or to say that we will never understand anything except that which we can find in books, creates a barrier to understanding. It creates a barrier to study. That is never a good thing when studying a phenomenon - natural or man made. And we have had this discussion before.
Similarly I once asked Tim Fohl how many different ceremonies were involved in the rock pile sites. He answered: essentially infinite number of ceremonies and infinitely different types of sites. That is just not right. It denies perfectly valid site classifications. Yes dreams are acted out at sites and, yes dreams may be infinitely varied. But I believe there is much more that is culturally cohesive and consistent in design than there is of the infinitely varying expressions of individuals in a context free and culturally free association. This stuff was not made in a cultural vacuum nor a scientific vacuum.
I wasn't really talking about just what we can learn from books -- but rather what information and knowledge has been lost from the builders as a result of repression on top of secrecy. I believe we need a great deal of their information to really understand the reasons these structures were built, and it is lost forever.
ReplyDeleteI spent a year and a half trying to learn the true meaning of an Indian word from Massachusetts. My research took me to all parts of New England, and I talked to every living expert on the Algonquian languages known to man. My journey ended with Ives Goddard at the Smithsonian who was quite candid and told me, "Too much has been lost, too much European noise exists in the records that we do have, and we'll never know what the word truly meant."
And I feel similarly with stone structure sites. They are, in many ways, an even more complex and less documented phenomenon.
When I made that statement concerning quartz, it was an educated guess based on the ethnography -- what we know of why Indians held onto special stones, or why they placed objects with special qualities in graves.
But take as an example FFC's theory concerning, "spirit doors." I've been trying to talk you out of that interpretation since I first heard it. The propitiation of a spirit dwelling inside splits, holes, and concavities in rocks and boulders is actually one of the better documented features from these sites. The spirit door interpretation flies in the face of the ethnography.
James and Mary Gage have a fascinating book about America's Stonehenge. But as fascinating as it is to me, I have heard it roundly criticized by more than one person for entering into far too much speculation and even being labeled new age nonsense.
As a vital first step, I believe we need to fight fire with fire. We need to prove that these sites have Indian origins using scholarship in order to reverse the ingrained racism in academia. I believe that it is absolutely doable, but it must leave speculation and guesswork behind.
Once that's done, let the guesswork begin.
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ReplyDeleteOne more point I want to make --
ReplyDeletewe are obviously not the first historians/researchers to document these sites. These sites were noticed by 19th century historians as well.
A 19th century historian from Rhode Island named James Arnold, and he wrote a paper for the Rhode Island Historical Society called, "The Stone Worshipers," because of all the stone structure sites he was seeing. But no one listened. His work is hardly known today. Why? Because he entered into a lot of speculation about Druids and the, "origins of the red race," and connections to the Mound-Builder cultures. His work is a rambling mess of outlandish guesses and wild speculation.
For good or bad, this man is our predecessor, and we could learn a thing or two from him - particularly from his mistakes.
What I would do is to address head on the idea that is strongly held by many archaeologists in the Northeast that the Indians had no stone building technology in the Northeast until they learned it from the colonists. To do this, we must present factual evidence, and I believe there is enough out there to weigh the scale in our favor. I've been documenting a lot of it on my own; Doug Schwartz has some excellent references on his website, and Jim Porter has compiled extensive data on the subject. But we must stay away from speculative opinions, plus ideas on alignments and anything that might be considered too New Age or unsupportive, because they give the opposition too much ammunition. We must deal with hard evidence.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I agree with Jim that we will never know what the stone cairns or mounds were used for or why they were built, because that evidence has been lost forever. Modern Indians have no clue what many of these structures are, nor how old they are. They might be hundreds of years old, or thousands. We just don't know -- yet. But probably sooner or later, we are going to have a breakthrough of sorts and find out how old some of them are. That will be a big step forward, because we might then be able to identify some of the mounds with a particular group of Indians from a set period in time. Right now we're living in the dark.
Again, please see: "Unique" at http://friendsofthefalls.blogspot.com/ - "a particular group of Indians from a set period in time (1659)," and who knows how long backwards from that.
ReplyDeleteThe repeated patterns elsewhere also exist here, and the repeated patterns are the science part, quite well illustrated by what we all are photographing and forming a hypothesis or two or ten about...
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ReplyDeleteMy comments were in reference to the statement that James suggested we prepare to counter the negative comments expressed by archaeologists of our region regarding the manmade stone features, and whether they are Indian or Colonial. I feel the statement should be direct, simple, and contain facts, not suppositions.
ReplyDeleteOver-reaction removed. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteI never read your post Peter. So no worries if you're concerned it offended me.
ReplyDeleteI realize we are all passionate about what we're doing. It's hard for me to spend literally hundreds and hundreds of hours combing through historical records over the course of years, at one point driving to libraries all over New England, without feeling like I shouldn't be even entertaining ideas that aren't supported whatsoever by even a shred of evidence.
As far as this thread goes, I couldn't agree with Norman more.
I agree with Norman as well. I do think that over time it will be possible to gain a more complete understanding of the purpose of pile sites by identifying and studying patterns, especially if the age of more of these sites can be determined. But from a preservation standpoint at least I think it is most important to first simply establish the fact that some of these piles and walls were built by prehistoric Indians and that they were and are of cultural importance. As long as a man-made structure is identified as a prehistoric Indian site associated with ceremonial worship, a historical society, newspaper journalist, or board of selectmen is unlikely to care if a pile was used as a platform for sending smoke signals, or for astronomy, or to mark the site of a battle.
ReplyDeleteToo bad there are no dates on these comments. Here it is 2013 and no such document ever got written. A lot of different points of view here but mostly getting sidetracked from the original call for a position paper. Today my arguments in favor of Native American origins have shifted from where they were in 2009 and, in any case, were never something you could put in a tidy position paper.
ReplyDelete