For the past twelve years, I have been deeply involved in the study of aboriginal stone constructions. Others, such as Fred Werkheiser of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, who first introduced me to this fascinating subject, have been at this much longer. The field has a small but enthusiastic group of researchers, most of whom regularly post photographs and commentaries of what they have found on their numerous excursions. Peter Waksman (http://rockpiles.blogspot.com) comes to mind as one who has been at this the longest. Others who maintain interesting websites and blogs are Doug Schwartz (http://www.nativestones.com/index.htm), James and Mary Gage (http://www.stonestructures.org), Tim MacSweeney (http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com), Larry Harrop (http://www.larryharrop.com), David Schewe (http://hi-torstone.blogspot.com), and Kathy Klopchin (http://twoheadwaters.blogspot.com).
All this activity has been fostered by the availability of inexpensive digital cameras, and by rapid communication and posting of images via the Internet. Whereas before a smattering of sites was fairly well
known to active researchers, now there are dozens, and
the list keeps growing. By categorizing certain features, as
Harrop has
done on his website, we now know that certain types of carefully made
stone structures, such as platform cairns, are
widespread throughout
the Northeast. Although many professional archaeologists
still claim
they were constructed by colonial farmers, the distribution of these
visually impressive features, and the fact that they appear to have no
agriculturally related function or any mention in the historical
record, suggest that they have a significance we are not yet aware of,
and that we need to look at them and other unusual stone
constructions
and accents more closely and seriously.There was once the strongly held belief that our Indian forebearers lived lightly on the land and left no visible permanent record of their existence. For the most part that is true, but if one takes a stroll through the rocky terrain of Rhode Island, as Larry Harrop has done repeatedly over the past five years or more, one will encounter a bounty of impressive above-ground stone constructions—artifacts really—most of which were probably made by American Indians over the thousands of years they occupied the land. Some of these, such as split-wedged boulders, are like a signature or a sign that one is entering terrain where one is bound to find
additional
examples of Indian stone handiwork. Split-wedged boulders
have been
found from Minnesota (Figure 1)
to Georgia (Figure 2) and up to
New
England (Figure 3), attesting
to their widespread aboriginal origin.Research in the Northeast
Unfortunately, progress in answering the question of who constructed the mysterious stone features of the Northeast took a detour when William B. Goodwin published a rambling book in 1946 on the stone ruins supposedly built by Celtic explorers to New England.[1] Goodwin compared the construction of some stone features in New England with Celtic ruins in Ireland, concluding that the New England examples were constructed by Celts around the eighth century. Goodwin’s book was followed up several decades later by several popular books on much the same theme by Barry Fell, a retired Harvard University marine biologist.[2] Fell got no closer to proving his case than Goodwin, and both incurred the wrath of the archaeological community, which concluded that all of this was simply “fantastic archaeology,” meaning tales of fiction without much value.[3] James Mavor and Byron Dix in their book Manitou, published sixteen years after Fell’s last book,[4] took a different view of the stone ruins in New England and pronounced them to be American Indian, but their emphasis on celestial and astronomical alignment of walls and chambers, while appealing to more reasonable people, still failed to impress the archaeological establishment. Even now, serious and even-handed researchers are frequently lumped together with those who espouse a more radical interpretation of our ancient past. A good example of where the situation stands is found in a curious and rather unpleasant commentary tucked at the back of the newsletter Terra Firma #5, published in 2007 by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Historic Landscape Preservation Initiative. In a book titled “The Last Word: Debunking the Myth of Stone Walls, Piles and Chambers,” the anonymous author wrote the following:“The stone walls built by New
England farmers helped define property lines, divide fields, woodlots
and pastures, and shape animal pens. Coincidently, the walls may match
cardinal compass points or celestial phenomena—but for practical
purposes rather than sacred. It was also common to construct cold
cellars and pile surplus rocks within pastures for later use or sale.
“Some have suggested a Native American origin for these features. There is no archaeological evidence to support this conclusion. When historians and archaeologists have researched stone walls, piles and chambers, they have invariably demonstrated that these features are associated with the activities of European settlers and have no Native American (or other) origin. In addition, Native American advisors have been involved in a number of excavations and have confirmed these findings. However, archaeologists do find stone features on Native American sites, hearths for example. But they rely on context to make the determination where, during a controlled scientific excavation, archaeologists analyze the entire site, all artifacts associated with the feature, and its placement in the soil. This provides the cultural and geological context needed to interpret and date the entire site.
“Archaeologists also consider ethnographic and ethnohistorical information. For example, Native American oral traditions record that people did place small stones or twigs on a sacred spot as they passed by. Over time this might result in a small pile of pebbles, tiny cobbles, or sticks, but not large piles. Conversely there is a strong, documented ethnohistory of stone building traditions among the European settlers of Massachusetts. Together, archaeology and ethnohistory provide conclusive evidence that stone walls, piles and chambers are not the work of ancient cultures.” [5]
What the author of “The Last Word” did not realize in his
or her myopic view of possible Indian stone construction, is how much
progress has been made not only in New England, but specifically in the
South over the past forty years or so in determining whether stone
piles and walls are colonial or aboriginal. A review of some of the
documents discussed below could give added impetus in moving discussion
away from a total denial of Indian manufacture for certain walls and
cairns to something approaching open-mindedness.“Some have suggested a Native American origin for these features. There is no archaeological evidence to support this conclusion. When historians and archaeologists have researched stone walls, piles and chambers, they have invariably demonstrated that these features are associated with the activities of European settlers and have no Native American (or other) origin. In addition, Native American advisors have been involved in a number of excavations and have confirmed these findings. However, archaeologists do find stone features on Native American sites, hearths for example. But they rely on context to make the determination where, during a controlled scientific excavation, archaeologists analyze the entire site, all artifacts associated with the feature, and its placement in the soil. This provides the cultural and geological context needed to interpret and date the entire site.
“Archaeologists also consider ethnographic and ethnohistorical information. For example, Native American oral traditions record that people did place small stones or twigs on a sacred spot as they passed by. Over time this might result in a small pile of pebbles, tiny cobbles, or sticks, but not large piles. Conversely there is a strong, documented ethnohistory of stone building traditions among the European settlers of Massachusetts. Together, archaeology and ethnohistory provide conclusive evidence that stone walls, piles and chambers are not the work of ancient cultures.” [5]
As one who has researched stone cairns, walls and other unusual man-made or altered stone features in the Northeast and beyond for more than a decade, I can say in all truthfulness that I have no solid factual evidence establishing who made or altered these features, when they were made, or what purpose they served. I have argued in several articles that by comparing certain types of features to others having similar morphology, a pattern of design can be established, one that suggests a commonality of purpose.
Such an argument was presented in an article I wrote about the Oley Hills site in eastern Pennsylvania,[6] where the pattern and distribution of walls and cairns seemed to focus on a huge boulder or stone tor on the summit of a hill, which I concluded was the main reason for the construction of the wall and cairns. The placement and focus of these features on the landscape seemed clear and convincing, but not to some readers of the article, presumably because no hard evidence was presented supporting the main thesis.
After the article was published and critical comments were received and digested, I concluded that however careful one is in formulating an argument based primarily on empirical evidence, if no hard evidence in the form of potsherds, charcoal for radiocarbon dating, or other cultural debris found in an archaeological context is presented supporting one’s viewpoint, one is simply left with an argument that is difficult, if not impossible, to justify. Since the point of this research was intended to advance knowledge, then it was simply not good enough. If we are to move forward in answering the age-old questions of, “Who made it?, When was it made?, and Why?” we must embrace archaeological methodology, invite archaeologists to work with us, and move toward a common goal of cooperation and understanding.
Stone Wall and Stone Mound Research in the South
For reasons that are not entirely clear, for decades archaeologists in the South have been more open to the idea that Indians were responsible for some of the stone features found there. Part of this may be due to the fact that when the region was first settled, pre-existing stone features on the landscape, such as the curious serpentine wall near the summit of Fort Mountain in northwest Georgia, were recorded (Figure 4). [7]
Then there were mavericks such as Arthur R. Kelly, legendary archaeologist and founder of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgia in 1947, who had an open mind about cairns and other stone features he had come across. Kelly had long been interested in unusual stone walls and enclosures he had encountered. He encouraged Philip E. Smith, a graduate student in archaeology at Harvard University, to undertake a survey of aboriginal stone constructions in Georgia and surrounding states. Smith’s report, published in 1962, was titled “Aboriginal Stone Constructions in the Southern Piedmont,” and was based on a survey conducted over two summers in 1955-56.[8] At the end of his article, Smith concluded that the walls he studied seemed to tie together large boulders and outcrops, and in certain instances made deliberate detours to connect with boulders (Figure 5). Because of this, Smith raised the possibility that the main reason for the walls was to link “certain impressive natural phenomena such as boulders or bluffs which may have held some religious, symbolic or animistic significance to the people concerned.” [9] Smith’s seminal article has been an inspiration to many researchers, including myself.
Finding no cultural artifacts during his two year investigation, Smith recognized the weakness of his research, in that it was ultimately based on hunches and not on hard evidence, and that he was no closer in getting to the real meaning of the structures at the end of his research than he was at the beginning. But by presenting the comparative evidence that he had accumulated, he hoped that it would serve as the “jumping-off point for future investigation.”
Hard research would come not from the examination of walls and enclosures, but from stone mounds, since they often represented burials. They also presented problems of cultural origin and date ever since they were first encountered. Serious research on stone mounds in the South, and whether or not they were aboriginal or colonial, began in 1978 with the publication of two articles: one by Fish, Fish and Jeffries,[10] and the other by Jeffries and Fish.[11] The former had a section titled “The Stone Mounds: A Need to Explore an Archaeological Mystery.” Beginning with a survey of historical references to stone mounds, the authors concluded with the statement: “Previous research concerning stone mounds has demonstrated that their nature and origin cannot be satisfactorily determined using surface appearance and location as the sole criteria.” [12]
That most of the cairns in the South were probably colonial or later was the subject of a study by Thomas Gresham in 1989,[13] which was an indirect criticism on an archaeological survey of the Parks-Strickland cairn site in Gwinnett County, Georgia, undertaken by Patrick Garrow and David W. Chase in 1988.14 Garrow and Chase concluded that the dozens of cairns on the site were probably not historic because of five factors:
1. The mound complexes are located
on the only level ground in the vicinity, which would have been most
suitable for farming.
2. The mounds straddle a property line but are also perpendicular to this line, whereas historic stone piles are almost invariably parallel to property lines to minimize the amount of area wasted to stone disposal.
3. The land was never cultivated, and the nearest cultivated land is separated from the mound complexes by steep slopes.
4. The mounds were carefully planned and constructed. “There is simply no logical reason why a farmer would have expended that much labor to construct stone mounds that had no other conceivable function.”
5. Mounds were not randomly placed and occur at equal distances from each other on parts of the Strickland Mound Complex.[15]
2. The mounds straddle a property line but are also perpendicular to this line, whereas historic stone piles are almost invariably parallel to property lines to minimize the amount of area wasted to stone disposal.
3. The land was never cultivated, and the nearest cultivated land is separated from the mound complexes by steep slopes.
4. The mounds were carefully planned and constructed. “There is simply no logical reason why a farmer would have expended that much labor to construct stone mounds that had no other conceivable function.”
5. Mounds were not randomly placed and occur at equal distances from each other on parts of the Strickland Mound Complex.[15]
