skip to main
|
skip to sidebar
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.
statcounter
It is ironic that New England has so many more of these sites than almost anywhere else (right?) but they are completely unknown to the local population, to most of the local tribes, and to these film-makers.
ReplyDeleteWhile those who follow this blog and others (such as Larry Harrop's) believe that the stonework we encounter in the New England woods is Indian, and representative of a sacred encounter in the past, the vast majority of archaeologists/anthrpologists and historians believe otherwise. We're on two different wavelengths. Just saying that certain sites are sacred doesn't cut it, and we need to either find a way of dating the stone features, or come up with a descriptive method, convincing to archaeologists, of how they do not fit the colonial paradigm.
ReplyDeleteA basic problem is that the traditional archeologist are not aware of the data, at all. You cannot get to the "table" to discuss the interpretation of observations if there have been no observations.
ReplyDeleteWe have to make the archaeologists aware of the data by showing them, and maybe showing them how to look. It means conversing with them, and attending and presenting at their conferences. There are some out there who have begun to accept the fact that the Indians constructed with stone. Harry Holstein, an archaeologist who will be presenting a talk at the next NEARA meeting, recently convinced the Archaeological Conservancy to purchase a stone mound site in Alabama. Maybe he will convince other archaeologists to think differently about Indian stone mounds, since some will certainly be in the audience.
ReplyDelete