General Hubbub Surrounding an Individual Artifact

[CMD]

Kyflintguy wrote:

Interested to hear your thoughts of the Narragansett Runestone Charlie, how do you look at it? Is it very different from other petroglyphs in the area? Do you get the feeling of it's a hoax , NA or from early colonist? Just curious  :dunno:

  Well, Josh, I can't do it justice here. It may be a 19th century hoax. I interviewed the guy who claimed to carve it in 1963. He seemed extremely credible to me. But people who owned the property in front of which the rock was located, beginning in 1952, remember seeing the inscription then, and calling it Indian Rock. I don't know why this guy came forward when he did, just as it was getting media play for the decision to put it on permanent display a few miles south of the original find location. It bears no resemblance to native petroglyphs. It's a European script.  Did Everett Brown carve it as a child in 1963? Was it really there by 1952? Might it be a copycat hoax of the Kensington Runestone from Mn.?  I keep an open mind, and am just glad it is now safe and sound for all future generations to enjoy and scratch their noggins over. I was responsible when I located it in April, 1985. I published it, but no location data, no photos that might even provide a clue. It was already well known, but only very, very locally. Others were not so responsible, as I described. One very wealthy individual, the scion of one of America's wealthiest families, a billionaire in fact, did not like seeing people on the shore in front of his property. He did not like it at all, if you catch my drift. And somebody, not saying him, removed it in the dead of night and dumped it in deeper waters. So it's been quite the local saga. But it only became known to my fellow Rhode Islanders after the book The Hooked X was published, and after the show "The Holy Grail in America" showed on a map where it was located. At that point, foot and boat traffic increased, to the great annoyance of a certain billionaire landowner.
So, I just keep an open mind. One researcher, who I very much respect, feels very strongly that the Narragansett Stone is the very best candidate for a genuine Medieval inscription in the United States. Maybe time will tell, maybe it won't.

[CMD]

orari wrote:

Many Americans live lives where they feel socially and culturally marginalized.  They want to be thought of as different and special---perhaps everyone feels that way.  Many are able to get there through legitimate accomplishments in life---like us here on the forum.  Those others who struggle with it most in life are looking for a "key differentiator" that marks them as special and gets them across the finish line.  People who have studied this sort of social phenomenon have noted that one such "key differentiator" is coming into possession of special knowledge, secret knowledge, hidden knowledge that only they and a very few other humans possess.  For example. some people possess the secret knowledge that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney planned and gave the order to unleash the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. You Tube is full of this stuff.  And you guys are right, it all hinges on a claim that cannot be proved or disproved.  All you have to do is assert something, ask a lot of "what if" questions, and the marginalized people will come flocking to you with eagerness to share in your "hidden knowledge," which makes them feel different and special---and makes them be---well---just plain nuts.  It's too bad someone cannot figure out a way to harness all of that expended energy and excitement to support the study and preservation of our real American past.  Some of the real stuff is stranger than any fiction.

  Thanks, orari. I agree, and I think it's relevant to always look below the surface when people make extraordinary claims.
I've noticed a couple of what I'll call "syndromes" at play in these matters. "True Believer Syndrome" is very common.
These folks either don't want to use the discrimination faculty of their intelligence, or simply don't realize they must use it if they expect to be objective and if they expect to be taken seriously. These are folks who, at conventions, boo any speaker who provides a mundane explanation for a feature the true believer feels requires an exotic explanation. They have no time, nor any reason, to debate you. Their beliefs are not open to discussion.
"Don Quixote Syndrome" aka "Crusader Syndrome". I know one guy in particular that suffers from this. And depending on what he actually believes, Wolter may have this syndrome as well. People like this don't just disagree with the dominant paradigms. They write insulting letters to reputable archaeologists, demanding to know why the mainstream scholars insist on hiding the truth from their fellow Americans. They have a great deal of anger toward the mainstream both in History and Prehistory, and Archaeology.
The Crusader is not just enamored with alternative histories, (some of which may be true after all; don't throw out any potential babies  with the bath water).  They also have to go into attack mode whenever the mainstream paradigms and supporters show up. For people rewriting history from the perspective of the "Crusader Syndrome", this is a war, not scholarship. It is a war, and the big bad establishment is the enemy. Now I know a guy who has this illness so bad, it's almost comical to observe his behavior.
These folks also tend to think very, very highly of themselves. They are coming to rescue us from all the lies promulgated on an unsuspecting public by the Smithsonian, after all. They are heroes, after all. In their own minds of course. The one guy in particular that I am thinking of has absolutely no training in any discipline required here, yet, an unshakable conviction that he must lead the charge to overthrow the mainstream's lies. Somehow, and I think the educated among us cannot understand such a thing, he truly believes it is he who must right these centuries old wrongs foisted upon Americans by university academics and trained archaeologists. He's infected with "Crusader Syndrome" and as a result his self image, and firm belief in his own self-importance, will be inflated to gigantic proportions. They may be the nicest people going, but intellectual humility is not their strong point, and they tend to think far more of their "accomplishment" in "realizing" the "truth" then anyone with a good education in the subject matter ever would.  These are the folks who see no problem in having history written by people with no training in historical scholarship whatsoever :huh:  :blink:  :dunno:
And to the above, I would add one more observation. Americans have always been notoriously anti-intellectual. We began as a frontier society, and intellectuals had no useful skills to provide on the frontier. That would come later, but the fact is Americans tend to look at their intellectuals as elitists. "They think they're better then the rest of us" is not an uncommon reaction of Americans to their intellectual class, which includes our academically trained scholars, after all. This attitude does not exist in European culture.

[tclark]

[QUOTE]CMD wrote:

Interested to hear your thoughts of the Narragansett Runestone Charlie, how do you look at it? Is it very different from other petroglyphs in the area? Do you get the feeling of it's a hoax , NA or from early colonist? Just curious  :dunno:

  Well, Josh, I can't do it justice here. It may be a 19th century hoax. I interviewed the guy who claimed to carve it in 1963. He seemed extremely credible to me. But people who owned the property in front of which the rock was located, beginning in 1952, remember seeing the inscription then, and calling it Indian Rock. I don't know why this guy came forward when he did, just as it was getting media play for the decision to put it on permanent display a few miles south of the original find location. It bears no resemblance to native petroglyphs. It's a European script.  Did Everett Brown carve it as a child in 1963? Was it really there by 1952?
  This is what puzzles me the most... if I understand correctly it is not certain that it existed there in 1952? Or even it was there in 1963? When is the date that it was certainly known to exist?
Kind of seems strange to me that if it had existed there for centuries, or even if it had been made in the 19th century, that it wouldn't have been already discovered by someone at some time and mentioned and recorded in someway before. I mean it's Its right out there in the open in plain sight for anyone to see who happened to be walking on the beach... If it was a 19th century hoax wouldn't it have been brought to light then? Wouldn't that have been the point of doing it?

[orari]

[QUOTE]CMD wrote:

Many Americans live lives where they feel socially and culturally marginalized.  They want to be thought of as different and special---perhaps everyone feels that way.  Many are able to get there through legitimate accomplishments in life---like us here on the forum.  Those others who struggle with it most in life are looking for a "key differentiator" that marks them as special and gets them across the finish line.  People who have studied this sort of social phenomenon have noted that one such "key differentiator" is coming into possession of special knowledge, secret knowledge, hidden knowledge that only they and a very few other humans possess.  For example. some people possess the secret knowledge that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney planned and gave the order to unleash the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. You Tube is full of this stuff.  And you guys are right, it all hinges on a claim that cannot be proved or disproved.  All you have to do is assert something, ask a lot of "what if" questions, and the marginalized people will come flocking to you with eagerness to share in your "hidden knowledge," which makes them feel different and special---and makes them be---well---just plain nuts.  It's too bad someone cannot figure out a way to harness all of that expended energy and excitement to support the study and preservation of our real American past.  Some of the real stuff is stranger than any fiction.

  Thanks, orari. I agree, and I think it's relevant to always look below the surface when people make extraordinary claims.
I've noticed a couple of what I'll call "syndromes" at play in these matters. "True Believer Syndrome" is very common.
These folks either don't want to use the discrimination faculty of their intelligence, or simply don't realize they must use it if they expect to be objective and if they expect to be taken seriously. These are folks who, at conventions, boo any speaker who provides a mundane explanation for a feature the true believer feels requires an exotic explanation. They have no time, nor any reason, to debate you. Their beliefs are not open to discussion.
"Don Quixote Syndrome" aka "Crusader Syndrome". I know one guy in particular that suffers from this. And depending on what he actually believes, Wolter may have this syndrome as well. People like this don't just disagree with the dominant paradigms. They write insulting letters to reputable archaeologists, demanding to know why the mainstream scholars insist on hiding the truth from their fellow Americans. They have a great deal of anger toward the mainstream both in History and Prehistory, and Archaeology.
The Crusader is not just enamored with alternative histories, (some of which may be true after all; don't throw out any potential babies  with the bath water).  They also have to go into attack mode whenever the mainstream paradigms and supporters show up. For people rewriting history from the perspective of the "Crusader Syndrome", this is a war, not scholarship. It is a war, and the big bad establishment is the enemy. Now I know a guy who has this illness so bad, it's almost comical to observe his behavior.
These folks also tend to think very, very highly of themselves. They are coming to rescue us from all the lies promulgated on an unsuspecting public by the Smithsonian, after all. They are heroes, after all. In their own minds of course. The one guy in particular that I am thinking of has absolutely no training in any discipline required here, yet, an unshakable conviction that he must lead the charge to overthrow the mainstream's lies. Somehow, and I think the educated among us cannot understand such a thing, he truly believes it is he who must right these centuries old wrongs foisted upon Americans by university academics and trained archaeologists. He's infected with "Crusader Syndrome" and as a result his self image, and firm belief in his own self-importance, will be inflated to gigantic proportions. They may be the nicest people going, but intellectual humility is not their strong point, and they tend to think far more of their "accomplishment" in "realizing" the "truth" then anyone with a good education in the subject matter ever would.  These are the folks who see no problem in having history written by people with no training in historical scholarship whatsoever :huh:  :blink:  :dunno:
And to the above, I would add one more observation. Americans have always been notoriously anti-intellectual. We began as a frontier society, and intellectuals had no useful skills to provide on the frontier. That would come later, but the fact is Americans tend to look at their intellectuals as elitists. "They think they're better then the rest of us" is not an uncommon reaction of Americans to their intellectual class, which includes our academically trained scholars, after all. This attitude does not exist in European culture.
  All very interesting and insightful observations.  Thank you so very much for your input CMD.

[Luvtohunt]

Well if you love to answer questions and after seeing that six breasted thing I guess I want be to embarrassed to show this to you.
I found this stone on my farm under an overhang the locals call Lovers Leap, it is a large rock on the side of a bluff with a great view of the arkansas and canadian river valley. There are dates and initials carved all over rock and overhang, some date back to 1800s but you can generally tell the real old dates the sun has to be right to read them. most of the date are 1900s. Under the overhang things change old dates look fresh but who knows? This place has a lot of history the other side of this bluff overlooks Younger's Bend and Bell Star's creek starts on the place, locals say this was an outlaw hang out, Indian grinding holes, also a Indian camp site on same bluff about 1 mile south. I found this rock setting on a ledge under the overhang, it look fresh carved to me and some of the older dates looked fresh too but i still think its kids just being kids, so i'm not vested in this thing,





I think it probably some bad word in Chinese.
There is the artifact. That's one thing. The other thing is the "general hubbub" that surrounds an artifact. What is the weirdest hubbub you have ever known to occur or thought was occurring around a particular artifact? I'll start just to give you an example of what I mean.
Several years ago, I had a newspaper article published about my research on portable petroglyph stones found in the Middle Cumberland region of Tennessee. All of a sudden, I started receiving numerous photographs of rocks from people who thought they might have found a portable petroglyph stone. In most instances, these were just large, amorphous rocks like folks bring to this forum sometimes. Well, I was very busy with a work project at that time and did not have a lot of extra time to answer back right away---although I love to answer questions about artifacts for people.
One particular person sent me a picture of a rock that she felt sure was a petroglyph stone, and she mentioned that she was planning a trip to the Gulf Coast. Okay. People go on vacation trips to the Gulf Coast all the time---no big deal. I was not able to answer back for several weeks, but I sensed growing impatience from this person over that period of time. Then I received a really insistent note that big plans were underway, the Gulf Coast trip was finally on and ready to go, and she really needed to know about her rock right then and there. So, I agreed to open up the old e-mail and take a close look at the photograph of the rock and write back. As it turned out, the rock was just an amorphous slab with no petroglyphs on it. So, I kindly wrote back and took some extra time to explain that it was not a portable petroglyph stone and to explain why in terms of what I could see or not see on the rock. People deserve a sensible explanation. Later that day, I got what seemed like an emotional and crest fallen note of disappointment and disillusionment about the rock and how it had been so important that the rock be a real petroglyph stone. No one came right out and said it---but it finally dawned on me what was probably going on with that amorphous rock.
This person probably felt certain that her amorphous rock was a valuable petroglyph stone. She probably thought it would be worth millions of dollars. An answer was needed from me right away so she could hastily sell the stone, temporarily pocket all that money, and use it to buy all of the airline tickets, tropical real estate, and abundant luxury items that she had been carefully planning for weeks---in other words---she viewed the amorphous rock as her key to a carefully organized and planned "whole new way of life" that was just a whisper away from reality on the Gulf Coast---and the whole thing was most likely based on her premature and perhaps delusional emotional investment in an ordinary rock. hmy:

[orari]

It looks recent to me.  Note that the incisions in the rock do not have the same patina as the rest of the rock---look fresh---dead giveaway on its being recent.

[CMD]

[QUOTE]tclark wrote:

[quote=CMD post=146656]

Interested to hear your thoughts of the Narragansett Runestone Charlie, how do you look at it? Is it very different from other petroglyphs in the area? Do you get the feeling of it's a hoax , NA or from early colonist? Just curious  :dunno:

  Well, Josh, I can't do it justice here. It may be a 19th century hoax. I interviewed the guy who claimed to carve it in 1963. He seemed extremely credible to me. But people who owned the property in front of which the rock was located, beginning in 1952, remember seeing the inscription then, and calling it Indian Rock. I don't know why this guy came forward when he did, just as it was getting media play for the decision to put it on permanent display a few miles south of the original find location. It bears no resemblance to native petroglyphs. It's a European script.  Did Everett Brown carve it as a child in 1963? Was it really there by 1952?
  This is what puzzles me the most... if I understand correctly it is not certain that it existed there in 1952? Or even it was there in 1963? When is the date that it was certainly known to exist?
Kind of seems strange to me that if it had existed there for centuries, or even if it had been made in the 19th century, that it wouldn't have been already discovered by someone at some time and mentioned and recorded in someway before. I mean it's Its right out there in the open in plain sight for anyone to see who happened to be walking on the beach... If it was a 19th century hoax wouldn't it have been brought to light then? Wouldn't that have been the point of doing it?
  It's involved. Prior to 1939, the rock was not on the shore at all. Aerial photos indicate it had to be on higher ground. The family that farmed the property for 100 years prior to 1939 have no written/oral stories involving this rock. Was it upside down on higher ground? Was it even above ground at all? Also, see below for an example, Mark Rock, of how carvings can somehow hide in plain site; it does happen.
In the second photo, from 1939, the rock is not actually visible and may have been covered by the over wash from the 1938 hurricane that is visible in that 1939 photo. We cannot know if it was even visible above ground in 1938. Or, if it was, whether an inscription was present. Wolter claims his "dating the weathering method" indicates the inscription must be at least 100 years old. But he won't, or can't, publish this dating method in a peer review venue, so  :dunno:  So, the kind of evidence we need to trace the rock back as far as possible in time just does not yet exist. I will say, despite the malleability of memory, it is hard to listen to the several siblings of the family that bought the property in 1952 and conclude that they must be mistaken. They called it Indian Rock because of those carvings, and if it did not appear until 1963, how could they not remember that it would have appeared suddenly, not there one Summer, bright and fresh the next Summer, and instead remember it being there right from the start of their residency? How could they forget that if Brown is telling the truth and he carved it? BTW, being below the mean high tide line, the rock was public property, not private. At the time of it's disappearance in the Spring of 2012. At the time of it's disappearance, the rock was visible above water for only a relatively brief period at low tides during the daily tidal cycle. Much further offshore then when I first visited it in April, 1985, at the time of an extreme moon low tide.




So, you see, prior to 1939, we don't know what the situation was. Memories are unreliable and very malleable. Did the residing family really first see it in 1952, 11 years before Everett Brown claims he carved it? Why did Brown come forward if he is not truthful?
If he did carve it in 1963, the lack of patina in the incised characters would be evident for some period of time. The residing family should have noticed a "sudden" appearance, and looking fresh. Brown claimed he did it over the course of a summer, not all at once. Bottom line: Brown did not speak with investigators with the RI DEM, so he could not be taken seriously. But, boy, he talked a good talk with me, on 2 occasions. What a mystery. It will be in a public park. An app may be created for visitors to use when visiting the feature. The town fathers want the village of Wickford on the map. It's a wonderful New England seaport as is. Brown was unable to derail those plans. Both sides need photos to support their claims, and neither side has such photos. Making my 1985 photos the earliest known. Regrettably.
Regarding the fact there is no published mention of this rock prior to our teams recording of it in April, 1985. Not as mysterious as one might think. The largest Native American petroglyph site in the Narragansett Bay region, Mark Rock, there's a thread describing it in our info center, went un-noticed until Edmund Delabarre  c. 1920. Yet, the village had been called Mark Rock for years. In the 1840's, a RI Historical Society Team, under the urging and direction of Carl Rafn (the original "Norse in America" enthusiast. He told the RIHS team that the Norse had carved Dighton Rock and they should scour the bay looking for more) searched for Norse inscriptions in the region. Remarkably, they stood upon the Mark Rock Ledge and saw nothing!! They heard it had carvings, found it, saw nothing, and left. Why, we will never know for certain. But everyone living there knew it had Indian markings, so these things can indeed completely escape detection lying in broad daylight for all the world to see. In the 18th century, the Rev. Ezra Stiles, first President of Yale, recorded the regions petroglyphs. One night, he stayed in the home of the owner, overlooking the ledge. Nobody told him the largest example of what he was interested in lay a stone's throw away, even though by then colonists were adding their own carvings to the ledge along side the petroglyphs.

[Lithophylic]

I see it all the time.  I am a geologist by trade and rocks are my life.  Artifacts my passion.  People will find something and want to believe so badly that they convince themselves it is real and will not listen to anything else.  This is especially true with "paint" pots and other geofacts associated with glacial deposits which can have grooves, holes, depressions.  It is just part of it.  I would like to hear more about your petroglyphs though.