(but I remember Thornton):
The stone retaining walls at Sandy Creek Park near Athens, GA look the same as those at Track Rock Gap, GA, but were they built by the same ethnic group?
Photo Credits:
Dana Mack Jones
"Looks can fool you. What may appear to some to be a 6,000 year old cairn erected by Native Americans can be just that, or a cairn erected 1,500 years ago, a 250 year old Indian grave, or just the work of an early settler clearing his field of stones."
And I meant to add this:
The newly identified Sandy Creek Terrace Complex near Athens, GA presents a major challenge for archaeologists and historic preservation architects. Fieldstone construction in eastern North America is not easily dated with currently available scientific technology.
http://www.examiner.com/article/guessing-the-age-of-ancient-stone-walls
More RT: http://www.examiner.com/native-american-history-in-national/richard-thornton
http://www.stratumunlimited.com/uploads/4/8/1/5/4815662/track_rock_article_-_maps_redacted.pdf
http://www.stratumunlimited.com/uploads/4/8/1/5/4815662/track_rock_article_-_maps_redacted.pdf
3 comments :
I left out the links to the whole thing and other stuff I thought might be interesting!
One comment on Thornton's article: He states that Johannes Loubser, the archaeologist who investigated Track Rock Gap, did radiocarbon dating at the site. He did not. Douglas Frink provided OCR (oxidizable carbon ratio) dates for the soil under the walls, not C14 dating, which is more acceptable to other archaeologists but also much more expensive.
The obvious retort is that insufficient observation can fool you too.
Patterns of "cairn" style and distribution, site damage, and correlation to topography are not things you can observe from just a handful of examples.
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