Stone "fort" of Tennessee -Open to the Public

Here's a diorama of Native Americans contructing the old stone fort down in Tennessee

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Stone_Fort_(Tennessee)

http://www.tnhistoryforkids.org/places/old_stone_fort

stone symposium 4 Oct 22nd 1 pm at Opus 40

Stone Symposium IV
Saturday October 22nd 1-6 pm

The Symposium will take place at Opus 40 , located at 50 Fite road in
Saugerties New York

More info at Opus40.org and www.hopeskillian.blogspot.com

10$ admission to Opus 40 includes entry to the Symposium


During this day long conversation concerning the extensive  native and
ancient quarrying that took place in our local area, the various
speakers will bring their expertise and knowledge to Opus 40, the
unique and important quarry based sculptural environment of Harvey
Fite, in order to shed light on how the people before us have altered
the stony landscape for purposes both functional and sacred. Once the
enormous amount of built stone structures, the mountains of stacked
stones and quarried water reservoirs that run from Saugerties up
through the  Paleolithic Flint Mines of Coxsackie and beyond are
properly looked at and connected, we may begin to sense and fathom an
earth-scaping project that took much more time then  the brief
bluestone industry would of allowed.

 featured speakers-

Glenn Kreisberg is a radio frequency engineer,  researcher, and writer
and has  edited 2 volumes of a Graham Hancock Reader including “
Mysteries of the Ancient Past”. The title of his forthcoming book is:
“Spirits in Stone: Lost Landscapes and Hidden Legacy of Northeast
America” will be published soon by Inner Traditions

Evan Pritchard  is the founder of The Center for Algonquin Culture. He
is the author of “Native New Yorkers, The Legacy of the Algonquin
People of New York”, “No Word For Time, the
Way of the Algonquin People”, and his most recent: “Bird Medicine, The
Sacred Power of Bird Shamanism” also put out by Inner Traditions

Linda Zimmermann is author of over 30 books on anomalous subjects, her
most recent is entitled “Mysterious Stone Sites in the Hudson Valley
of New York and northern New Jersey”

Teresa Bierce is a longtime investigator of local lithic curiosities
and is the Western Connecticut coordinator for NEARA (New England
Antiquities Research Association)

David Johnson is a Past President of the Orange County Chapter of the
New York State Archaeological Association. He is currently researching
stone sites in the Woodstock area, the  Chaco Canyon region of the
South West and the Nazca sites in Peru.

Matt Bua is author of the book: “Talking Walls: Casting Out the
Post-Contact Stone Wall Building Myth” which has a focus on the area
of Kiskatom in the town of Catskill.

Philip C. LaPorta is geologist and archaeologist who is executive
director of The Center for the Investigation of Native and Ancient
Quarries-(CINAQ)
schedule(subject to change)
1::15 Matt Bua intro- welcoming
> 1:45  Teresa Bierce
   2:15- Philip laPorta
> 2:45: David Johnson
> 3:30  Evan Pritchard
> 4:15 Linda Zimmerman
> 5:30  Glenn Kreisberg

Stephen Hren's Review of Talking Walls for the Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-hren/book-review-talking-walls_b_8213844.html

Having been a frequent visitor to the beautiful countryside of New England, traveling a byroad or ambling along on Amtrak, it's impossible not to notice the astounding quantity of stone walls or piles that are simply everywhere. Composed mostly of grey granite, they meander hither and yon, up ridges and along ancient streams. They are rarely spoken of, or thought of much either I suppose, and there's a general sense that they were built some time by our industrious pioneer forebears, early Europeans who were clearing fields or building fences to keep their livestock from wandering off.

How mind-blowing, then, to stumble upon a book such as Matt Bua's Talking Walls: Casting Out the Post-Contact Stone-Wall-Building Myth, recently published byPublication Studio Hudson in Catskill, NY. While the myth of pioneers building this colossal earthworks has a veneer of warm, fuzzy wholesomeness at first blush, Bua's closer examination of the revelant facts makes this no more likely to be true than any other fairy tale. Bua keeps the book moving through crisp prose, thankfully keeping the minutia and more detail-oriented asides in a long footnotes section. He succintly lays out many cogent arguments that point to the likely historical source of these walls being constructed over a much longer time period, and for perhaps less banal reasons than mere livestock enclosure, well before any Europeans set foot on New England's rocky shores.

Here are the highlights:

First off, when one actually looks at them, the walls make no sense as livestock enclosures or for property line demarcations. They are erratic, often meandering over mountaintops and stopping abrupting at waterways. They have numerous secondary features such as large (8' or more) cone-shaped cairns that make absolutely no sense for time and energy strapped pioneers who also had to farm, build homes and barns, chop wood, and all the rest.

Secondly, there are simply too many walls, and not nearly enough people and time in the pioneer days, to come even remotely close to having enough labor to build all those walls. Given a timeframe of roughly 250 years (1620-1870), and if the population of New England all worked on these walls continuously with one day off a week and three months off for winter, they would need to construct roughly four miles of stone walls a day, or about a foot of wall every two seconds. Hell, maybe there were a few Paul Bunyun types back then that could have busted that out...and then maybe spent their nights farming and chopping wood...but everyone? For 250 years? Folks, that ain't right.

Thirdly, you would think that such a gargantuan undertaking would be written about somewhere, at least in someone's diary, at least once, right? "Alexander came down with the flu today. The sow birthed six piglets. Built twelve miles of stone wall today." But alas, no. Okay, I know what you're thinking - they were too tired to write about it. But really? No one?

So, who built them? How about the folks that were here before us? Native Americans built them. For what? Mr. Bua has lots of ideas on this score, and I'm not going to give everything away in this review. But consider the fact that elsewhere in the Americas, North and South, large earthworks and colossal structures are the norm, not the exception. And consider that New England was inhabited for ten millennia before the European colonists showed up...and then read this great book and let Mr. Bua pry your mind open to what might really have gone down with all those stone walls.

Stephen Hren's most recent book is the illustrated ribald epic Max's Hungry Ghost, available at his website: www.stephenhren.com.

Paul Smart's 'Talking Walls' review in the Saugerties Times

Excerpt from Paul Smart's review from Oct 15th edition of the Saugerties Times:

Many know of Matt Bua from his sculptural art works, such as the two
story handmade cat he constructed from found twigs and lumber in
Catskill several years ago, his wild drawings and curating/editing of
a great book about visionary architecture or B Home experiments with
building myths and new realities out in backcountry Greene County, or
even his self-made instruments and musical adventures. Nothing he's
done to date, though, properly prepares one for the deep joys, and
varied catharses, immersed in his newest book put together with
Catskill's enterprising Publication Studio Hudson.

Talking Walls: Casting Out The Post-Contact Stone-Wall-Building Myth,
which Bua will be discussing at a book launch event at Saugerties'
Inquiring Mind Bookstore starting at 7:00 PM on Saturday, October 17,
is an artist's book of a brand-new stripe. Like some classics that
begot entire fields of science in the 18th and 19th centuries, or
great explorers' memoirs, the author admits the limitations of his
curiosity-driven and chaotic methodology right from the start.

"I am not a scientist. I am an artist. My training is in connecting
seemingly disparate dots. My practice involves training my
consciousness to deal with loose ends and dancing around the
unanswerable," he writes in his own Forward. "This book is far from
anything close to a complete theory concerning the stone walls and
their builders. It is essentially just a 'stepping off' place,
considering existing explanations so each of us can experience what's
still here firsthand. There is no training or school that can prepare
one for this, just the desire for anything and everything to happen
with splendor and grandeur."

What results, care of new Creative Commons licensing allowances, is a
mash-up of materials always based on Bua's in-the-field walks and
ramblings, his deep observations and ruminations about all the stone
walls throughout our greater region. He starts with a shake of the
head -- is there really any way this could have all been done by
settlers while pioneering and farming and raising families and
starting communities? Then he shows off all he's found in the woods,
in books, in ever-widening gyres of research, and finally his own
mapmaking and creative conjurings.

Who cares, in the final round, what's truly true? THis is a book of
voyaging and making history, and the world, one's very own.

800 year old oak down in Southport NC noted as a Native American Marker

Old Stacked Stones and Dead Soldier

Looking through a friend's book "The American Civil War: A Visual Encyclopedia" I ran across this photo on page 105. Was this something he threw together to be used as a blind or was it already there?

'Ancient Paving" at Pemaquid Maine

The Caption says" Ancient cellars and pavement have been excavated on the site which may go back as far back as the Fifteenth century" or much, much further. Source :Album of American History:Colonial Period1943 p 64

Livingston Manor- 1714 John Beatty Map--Lots of References to Native American Stone heaps

The book -Talking Walls is Out and About

http://www.publicationstudio.biz/books/303

Talking Walls Book Launch June 12th at Publication Studio 460 main street, Catskill

Presentation at N.E.A.R.A's spring conference on April 24th in Kingston NY

I'm pleased to announce that I will be presenting Friday eve at 7pm on April 24th at the conference.

for more info- www.neara.org

Spring 2015 Conference

NEARA SPRING 2015 CONFERENCE, scheduled for April 24th - 26th at 

the Quality Inns & Suites in Kingston, NY.

Invited speakers include :

Michael Gramly - President The American Society for Amateur Archaeology  

David Johnson - Past President Orange County Chapter of the NYS Archaeological Association

Matt Bua - Artist/Author/Director - The Stone Symposium

Donald Aubrey - Land Surveyor and Native American researcher

David Schewe - School teacher and NY Native American site researcher

Laurie Rush - Cultural Resource Manager - Fort Drum, NY

Plus much more including: Fri. & Sun. Field Trips, Exhibits, Book Sales, Members Banquet and Raffle!

Stone Symposium III- Saturday, December 13th

2 Presentations and Book Launch

Glenn Kreisberg: Mission Malta- Exploring the Sound and Energy Properties of Ancient Architecture

Matt Bua- The Mapping of a Prehistoric Stone Site in Catskill NY
Book Launch- 

Talking Walls: Casting Out the Myth That All Stone Walls of the North East Were Built Post-Colonially
8 pm
at Print.Studio. Hudson in Catskill
460 Main Street Catskill NY 12414
free and open to the public

more up to date Print Studio news can be  seen:
www.facebook.com/pubhudson
Glenn Kreisberg; editor of the Author of the Month page at GrahamHancock.com, is a radio frequency engineer, writer, researcher, and licensed outdoor guide and currently serves as the vice president of the New England Antiquities Research Association(NEARA.org). The author of numerous articles and papers, including Lithic Mysteries of the Northeast, he is the founder and editor of the alternative science and history website ASHnews.org. He lives in Woodstock, New York, with his wife and two children.

Upcoming Lectures

Sunday, September 28th, 2014
at the Bascom Lodge

http://www.bascomlodge.net/1/Calendar.aspx

Talking Walls - Casting Out The Myth That All Stone Walls Were Build Post-Colonially, with Matt Bua"

In The Lobby At 6pm, Event Is Free
The dry stacked stonewalls focused on in this lecture do not enclose land, are built on massive foundations (ruling out field clearing piles) and terminate at streams and marshes.  Many exist where land has not been cultivated in the past.  An array of uncontested North American ancient stonewall complexes will be presented as well as correlations to stones walls and their usages from around the world. 

Directions

Some spring 2014 shots

Cairn on ground

Embrasure in Wall Surrounding Notched Boulder

December 7th 2013 Stone Symposium II

Save the Date: Dec 7th at the Catskill Community Center 344 main st Catskill NY 12414

Presentations By:

Glenn Kriesberg:
Lithic Alignments in the Northeast, Natural, Native or Nonsense

Polly Midgley:
Enigmatic Stone Chambers in Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess Counties

Matt Bua:
When Walls Talk- (Casting out the Myth that all Stone Walls were built Post-Colonially)

Stone Vault in Kiskatom- according to Gerard Fowke- see post further down

Illustrations of uses of stone and earth walls from other nearby cultures of yesterday

Kiskatom Land patent Map from around 1767 which reference stone work

Marked with green are all the references to existing stone work, walls including a pile and an "old ditch"

Hopefully the resolution is high enough. Lots of info on this thing

Great In-depth West-Central Texas Cairn Website

Area ranchers typically have referred to these large cairn clusters as “Indian burial grounds” http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/cairn/index.html

Thanks -Tim MacSweeney at Rock Piles - 

EARLY SURVEY OF BOSTON BEFORE THE MOUNDS WERE REMOVED

Before with mounds    

After.... mounds removed

and in between....1775 survey

Thanks for the Comment  Pwax....
Yes, the verdict is still "way-out"  . Especially since these mounds were flattened long ago.
In my eyes these " hills" are totally consistent with other surveys done in the north east such as EG Squier's 'Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York'

and the removal of the "hills".... gotta see what they found...
Cutting down Beacon Hill in 1811; a view from the north toward the Massachusetts State House^[

3 quotes From "Memorial History of Boston"
" It is rare indeed that a bone of their skeletons is found, except among the middens accumulated around the old camping grounds of the aborigines"

"In Divers places there is much ground cleared by the Indians"

"Winthrop's company found Boston sparsely wooded; water however, was abundant and good. In addition to the springs near Blackstone's House, mention is made in the first records of a "great spring" in spring lane, as well as other springs on the neck and elsewhere"

From Boston:A Topographical History by  Walter Muir Whitehill
"This cove was, as we have seen a marsh partially separated from the Charles River by a long narrow island of solid ground. There was seemingly an indian track, transitable at low tide, across the marshy stretches that separated this island from the peninsula, along the line of the present causeway street."

From James Henry Stark 1882 Antique Views of ye old Towne of Boston
" This want of water was their principal cause of removal to Shawmut, now Boston; for not with standing the resolution of the principal men to build their town at Charlestown, the discouragement attendand on sickness and death caused many to be restless, and to think of other locations; in the meantime Mr William Blackstone who lived at Shawmut( which signifies, in Indian Language, "Living Water," on account of the springs found there, and called by the newcomers Tramount or Trimount, from its appearance from Charlestown of three large hills), learned of their distress, and going over to their relief, advised them to remove to the peninsula. His advice was kindly received and followed soon after. Thus Bosotn became settled by the English Puritans.

Link to audio from stone symposium December 9th 2012

http://www.wgxc.org/archives/5592

Introductions (Bumpy)

Matt Bua 0:00-3:30
Harry Matthews 3:30- 8:50
Wildon Williams 10:08-10:55
Thomas Brannon 10:55-15:30
Polly Midgley 15:30-18:50
Glen Kreisberg 20:00- 1:21
Q and A 1:21-1:46

crude Incan Refugee Homes or Stone Chamber?

This looks to me like a variation on the Stone Chambers we have around here for observing Solar and Lunar events, but the folks who put out this book feel otherwise....
Below is the text that accompanied this image.

"Ancient buildings found in the tropical forests of   theVilcabamba region are more roughly made than those in most Inca cities. Crude shelters such as this one, now green with lichen and moss, were probably built in haste by Inca refugees who fled to the jungle to escape the Spaniards." p 164  Reader's Digest "The World's Last Mysteries"  The Italics are mine

Ancient quarries

This small cairn sits on a meandering stacks of stone that keep terracing down.

 Why are these ancient quarries? The amount of time it took to construct these massive stone mounds that go on for miles and miles is way beyond what the Europeans who settled in Kiskatom had. You have to see it to understand the scope.

Stone Symposum December 8th

Stone Symposium Saturday December 8th at the Catskill Community Center  and Live radio Broadcast(wgxc.org) 6-9 pm Radio broadcast 7-9
"An Open Discussion about the Unknown Origins of the Engineered Stone Landscape in the Catskill Area and Beyond"

Free and Open to the Public

for Images and  more info:
www.Hopeskillian.blogspot.com

Symposium Location- 6-9 pm
Catskill Community Center
344 Main St Catskill NY 12414

6pm meet/ greet/ look over materials
begin discussion..Note: There is a gallery to display any pertinent materials.
I'll hang some of the old maps of the Kiskatom that reference the existing stonework.
7pm- begins Broadcast on WGXC 90.7 fm
Participants introductions
7:30- Glenn Kreisberg Powerpoint
"Lost Landscapes and Hidden Legacies:
A Survey of Stone Structure Sites in the Catskills and Hudson Valley"
8:30 Q and A- Wrap up
9pm Broadcast ends-

Continue Conversations.....

Participants (so far)-

Polly Midgley, the NEARA New York Coordinator spoke on The Stone Chamber Enigma at the2010 MES Symposium 
Harry Matthews- Stone Balancer from the High Falls road area
Jared Handelson- Resident of Kiskatom who’s had a long interest in the Lithic sites
of this area and around the world.
Glenn Kreisberg-  Vice President Of New England Antiquities Research Association (neara.org)
Laura Anderson- Moderator
Matt Bua- Recent Kiskatom resident who realized many of  stone “walls” in the area existed before the arrival of first Europeans...

Sam Sebren- Broadcast Engineer and WGXC Torch Carrier

Cliff Structures

The middle photo shows 2 large corner stone constructions on the edge of a cliff out cropping. I'm standing 20 or so feet above.

Fengshui...

In very simple terms, the essence of fengshui is that configurations of land forms and bodies of water are seen to direct the flow of the universal qi, or 'cosmic current', which with the help of the specialist can be brought to optimum advantage for the person's wealth, happiness, longevity and procreation; similarly, a malicious flow of qi may bring disaster. The flow of qi is influenced by all natural bodies and human constructions, which may either repulse, redirect or catch the qi
-Fengshui in China by  Ole Bruun



Joseph Needham in 'Science and Cultivation in China', describes the influence of fengshui on the Chinese Landscape in terms which might well be applied to ritually ordered landscape in New England:
"Every Place had its special  topographical feature which modified the local influence of the various ch'i of nature. The forms of the hills and directions of the watercourses, being the outcome of the moulding influences of winds and water, were the most important, but in addition, the heights and forms of buildings, and the directions of of road and bridges, were a potent factor. the force and nature of the invisible currents would be from hour to hour modified by the positions of the heavenly bodies, so their aspects as seen from the locality in question had to be considered"   John Michell -Secrets of the Stone p. 111

Some quotes from folks who say all stone walls were built post colonially...

From a guy who thinks everyone who visits "America's Stonehenge"  is a gullible sucker,
this quote below has a strange credence....

"Walls have influenced the terrain directly. Hilltop walls forced the rain toward different streams. Lowland walls impounded many small wetlands, caused the build up of soil on slopes, and acted as underground drains on floodplains. Stone walls are so tightly enmeshed with streams,slopes, and soils that the distinction between wall and non wall is often unclear"
          -Robert M. Thorton Author of 'Stone by Stone'(page 7)  and 'Exploring Stone Walls'

And here's the evidence that no stone walls existed before the European presence.....

" The lack of written material is interesting in itself, for it shows better than anything in writing ever could how ordinary these enduring objects were once thought to be"

- Susan Allport  ,Author of Sermon in the Stone (page 107)

There you have it..... she couldn't find much, therefore the Europeans built the whole 252,539 miles of stone walls in New England and New York that existed as per the 1871 Department of Agriculture report on Stone Fences.

Back to Robert M. Thorson...

In his "Field Guide to New England Stone Walls"  The entry which has the title "The Oldest Wall"

reads: The oldest known documentary mention of a stone wall in New England is this one. In 1607 the North Virginia Company established a colony with the intent of permanent settlement. Though it disappeared within the year, a letter cited by the historian Howard Russell strongly suggests that the colonists built a stone wall, which was later destroyed or buried"  page 145....(the italics are mine)

There you have it. More solid evidence that all stone walls were built in post colonial times.

"Destroyed or buried?" nice wall building guys

More Choice quotes from Robert M Thorson's Stone By Stone Book(pg 77):

Jared Eliot's Essays on Field Husbandry in New England(1748 to 1760), the first treatise on agricultural practices in the British colonies- one that included detailed descriptions of how to enclose land, whether by fencing, ditching, plashing(integrating a mix of wood and hedge), or hedging-contains  NO mention of stone walls. Similarly, the anonymous American Husbandry (1775) comments extensively on both the purpose and the condition of colonial enclosures, but does not mention fences or walls made of stone.

Ironically, one of the first mentions of stone walls in the colonies is from an archaeological context. According to the historian Howard Russell, the failed Sagadahoc Hearbes and some old Walls' to be observed by a visitor a decade and a half later."1 Apparently, they were first noticed not for their value as a building accessory, but as physical evidence of earlier human life, in this case the earliest English colonization in the Northeast.  Italics-mine (M.B.) Of course Robert Thorson has nothing backing this claim up.

1. H. Russell's ,Book: A Long Deep Furrow:Three  Centuries of Farming In New England, 1976

Tim MacSweeneyNovember 29, 2012 3:59 AM

Yes matt, I know just what you mean: 

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2011/02/abundance-of-rareties.html

pwaxDecember 2, 2012 3:41 AM

There are so many basic phenomena that Thornton appears unaware of, that you have to assume he is a pseudo-scentist who writes well but is not observant.

JJ