America's Stonehenge

America's Stonehenge is an archaeological site consisting of a number of large rocks and stone structures scattered around roughly convert|30|acre|m2 near the town of Salem, New Hampshire in the northeast United States. The origin and purpose of the structures is standardly attributed to a mixture of land-use practices of local farmers in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as construction of structures by owner William Goodwin in the 1930s. However, a number of other hypotheses exist. Although the area was named after the archaeological site of Stonehenge in England, there is no actual connection between the two.

America's Stonehenge is open to the public for a fee as part of a recreational area that includes such things as snowshoe trails and an alpaca farm. It is a popular tourist attraction, with particular appeal to believers in New Age systems. Among several speculations put forward concerning the site's origins are claims that it could be an astronomical observatory built by some unknown, pre-Columbian civilization.

The site was first dubbed Mystery Hill [gnis|868670|Mystery Hill] by William Goodwin, an insurance agent who purchased the area in 1936. This was the official name of the site until 1982. The site was renamed "America's Stonehenge" (a term coined in a news article in the early 1960s) in an effort to separate it from roadside oddity sites and reinforce the idea that it is an ancient archaeological site.

Origin

The site's history is muddled partly because of the activities of William Goodwin, who became convinced that his Mystery Hill was proof that Irish monks (the Culdees) had lived there long before the time of Christopher Columbus, a concept he sought to publicize. He moved many of the stones around from their former positions to better support his idea, thus obliterating a good deal of the archaeological record. The site's current owners, the private company America's Stonehenge Foundation, say his activities are "one of the reasons the enigma of Mystery Hill is so deep".fact|date=June 2008

Proponents of a pre-Columbian, yet non-Native American, origin for the site argue that some stones are encased in trees that may have sprouted before the arrival of the first colonists, claim that there are similarities between the ruins and Phoenician architecture, and say that marks on some stones resemble some ancient writing systems of the Old World. The late Barry Fell, a marine biologist from Harvard University and amateur epigrapher, claimed that inscriptions at the site represented markings in Ogham, Phoenician and Iberian scripts (also referred to as Iberian-Punic). He detailed his claims in his book "America B.C."

Artifacts found on the site lead archaeologists to the conclusion that the stones were actually assembled for a variety of reasons by local farmers in the 18th and 19th centuries. For example, a much-discussed "sacrificial stone" which contains grooves that some say channeled blood closely resembles "lye-leaching stones" found on many old farms that were used to extract lye from wood ashes, the first step in the manufacture of soap.

Carbon dating of charcoal pits at the site provided dates from 2000 BC to 173 BC, when the area was populated by ancestors of current Native Americans. In archaeological chronology, this places indigenous use of the site into either the Late Archaic or the Early Woodland time periods.

In 1982, David Stewart-Smith, director of restoration at Mystery Hill, conducted an excavation of a megalith found in situ in a stone quarry to the north of the main site. His research team, under the supervision of the New Hampshire state archaeologist, excavated the quarry site, discovering hundreds of chips and flakes from the stone. Both the state archaeologist and Dr. Stewart-Smith concurred that this was evidence of indigenous tool manufacture, consistent with Native American lithic techniques, although no date could be ascertained.

It is possible that in its original form the site may have been one of the ceremonial stone landscapes described by USET, United South and Eastern Tribes, Inc., in their resolution on sacred landscapes.

Notes

Books

*Robert Ellis Cahill, "New England's Ancient Mysteries" 1993, Old Saltbox, Danvers, Mass: ISBN 0-9626162-4-9
*Barry Fell, "America B.C." 1989 (2nd edition), Pocket Books: ISBN 0-671-67974-0
*Mark Feldman, "The Mystery Hill Story" 1977, Mystery Hill Press
*Mary Gage, "America's Stonehenge Deciphered" 2006, Powwow River Books: ISBN 0-9717910-4-X
*David Goudsward, "America's Stonehenge" 2003, Branden Books: ISBN 0-8283-2074-8
*David Goudsward, "Ancient Stone Sites of New England" 2006, McFarland Publishing:0-7864-2462-1
*Joanne Dondero Lambert "America's Stonehenge" 1996, Sunrise Publications: 0-9652630-0-2

External links

* [http://www.stonehengeusa.com/ America's Stonehenge homepage]
* [http://www.bu.edu/bridge/archive/2002/02-01/archaeology.htm Archaeology professor debunks claims for ancient rock structures as pseudoscientific fallacy] (BU Bridge, 1 February 2002)