Some fine rock piles from Jeff in RI:
Here.
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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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Related Westerly Sun Article: http://www.thewesterlysun.com/news/richmondhopkinton/4120011-129/some-clearly-see-ceremonial-site-in-hopkinton-woods.html
ReplyDeleteI don't know why, but I'm still amazed how disinterested archaeologists are in these amazing stone piles, and that they still continue the old refrain that they are nothing but field clearing piles.
ReplyDeleteThe archeologists are payed for their lack of interest.
ReplyDeleteTheories on that by two friends: Regarding the academic conventional wisdom that these cairns are field clearing work, Upton Sinclair said it best: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" - Dave C.
ReplyDeleteFor archaeologists today, almost all of the money comes from developers, and no developer is going to hire an archaeologist who keeps finding important ancient stonework in the woods. - Jim P
True, but I also think there is more to this than just money. There are also archaeologists who honestly believe that all the stone piles they see are colonial. That's what they've been taught, and they're not going to waver from this belief. I've met and dealt with a number of them.
ReplyDeleteVery true Norman -- the element of racism in the scholarship - mostly 19th century historians who believed Indians lacked the motivation and ingenuity to build in stone despite the overwhelming historical evidence. In Rhode Island we often talk about the myth of Stone-Layer John -- a Narragansett Indian who alone is credited by those historians as having been the only Narragansett ingenious enough to have learned the mason's trade from the Europeans and credited with the creation of all Indian stonework in Narragansett territory, from the fort at the Great Swamp, to Queen's Fort, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. The idea that one Indian would be responsible for all of that stonework is absurd and defies common sense, yet there it is permeating the scholarship on Rhode Island Indians.
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