It is well known that England, Scotland, Ireland, and Brittany are full of stone circles. Stonhenge is one of the most famous-but there are thousands of others. Recently, I learned that such circles have been found in N. America (mostly NY and New England). I just returned from viewing one-in N. Salem, NH, called “Mystery Hill”.
Has anyone done any research on these artifacts? Surely the strong resemblances cannot be coincidence only-but I’ve never read any real scholarly work on the American stone circles.
Does anyone know more about this?
Well, this is all I could find after a quick search.
I assume you mean STONE circles.
Mystery Hill in Salem New Hampshire is a great day trip, even if you don’t buy the “America’s tonehenge” angle. The woods are pleasant to walk through, and the stuff is interesting to look at and speculate about. Their gift shop sells a lot of obscure small-press books on the site, almost all of it “pro-stonehenge”.
Among the other “pro” books is “They All Discovered America” and “The Ruins of Great Ireland in America” (I’m sorry, but I’m at work right now, and I don’t recall the author’s names).
For balance, the orthodox historical line is that these structures were the work of a settler named Pattee and his sons, who originally lived on the site. Exactly how much was due to Pattee isn’t clear, since the fellow who excavated the site back in the 20’s felt no qualms about “reconstructing” things the way he thought they ought to be. There are reportedly some pre-reconstruction photos somewhere, which the owners of the site have been looking for. They’ve also done somde carbon-dating work on the site.
My own feelings about this are that the “pro” arguments are interesting and ingenious, but not totally convincing (unlike the English Stonehenge, for instance, there’s nothing to mark the “center” of the VERY irregular stone ring, so its position seems to be arbitrary. This makes the many reported alignments of stones with risings and settings of the sun and moon at critical points of the year questionable at best. I should point out that the owners have cleared vast swaths through the trees so that you can actually watch the risings and settings of the sun and moon at the horizon.). On the other hand, even allowing that the 20th century excavators may have “improved” the site, there’s just too much weirdness here for Pattee and his sons to have built all of this. My own vote goes to the local Indians as the authors of this interesting site, but nobody else seems to feel that way.
A last note on this – H.P. Lovecraft may have visited the site, and it may have served as the inspiration for some of his works (“The Dunwich Horror” in particular). You can see pictures of the site in L. Sprague deCamp’s bio f Lovecraft, and in other works. The bookstore on the site carries a pamphlet arguing the case. I notice that the editors of “The Annotated Lovecraft” don’t believe this, but I find it plausible.
An interesting place to look for recent imitation stonehenges in the US is http://www.roadsideamerica.com . They devote an entire page to the subject. (“America Unhenged”)
If I recall correctly, Kenneth Feder discusses Mystery Hill (and similar things) in his book Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. This would definitely fall into the anti camp. Feder (and I agree) feels that most attempts to find European or extra-terrestrial orgins for new world monuments can be traced to a subtle form of racism.
The book as a whole is very interesting, but the chapters on the Mound Builders is particularly interesting because I had been taught since elementary school that nobody knew anything about how these things were built or who built them, and that just isn’t true.
Another point that Feder makes is that pseudoscientific claims always sound plausible until the wander into a field with which you are familiar.
As far as what Feder says about Mystery Hill I will have to wait until I get home and will report back.
About the mounds and subtle racism: I heard in a class (“sigh”, you say) taught by a well-respected american architectural historian (no, I don’t have any written sources, sigh) that in the colonial days already everyone was trying to figure out WHO could have made them (reigning theories being vikings, Irish, Hebrews, etc.). Apparently Thomas Jefferson was the first and only person for a long long time who suggested that it had been American indians.