America's Stonehenge

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America's Stonehenge, dubbed Mystery Hill by William Goodwin, an insurance agent who purchased the area surrounding the site in 1936,^[1] is the site of a number of large rocks and stone structures scattered around roughly 30 acres (120,000 m²) near the town of Salem, New Hampshire, in the northeast United States. The name "America's Stonehenge" is of recent coinage. There is no connection with Stonehenge in England.

The site has become a popular tourist attraction, with particular appeal to believers in New Age systems. Among the several unverified speculations which have been put forward concerning the site's origins include claims that the site could be an astronomical observatory built by some unknown, pre-Columbian civilization.

They argue that some stones are encased in trees that may have sprouted before the arrival of the first colonists, point to 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, claimed that inscriptions at the site represented markings in Ogham, Phoenician and Iberian scripts (also referred to as Iberian-Punic). He detailed his finds in his book America B.C.

Carbon dating of charcoal pits at the site provided dates from 173 BC to 2000 BC. This could indicate that the site was built by Native Americans. However, artifacts found on the site lead many mainstream archaeologists to the conclusion that the stones were assembled for various 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.

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 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".

[edit] Notes

2. In 1982, David Stewart-Smith, director of restoration at Mystery 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 NH 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 stone work, consistent with Native American lithic techniques, although no date could be ascertained.

[edit] External links

• America's Stonehenge homepage
• Archaeology professor debunks claims for ancient rock structures as pseudoscientific fallacy (BU Bridge, 1 February 2002)
• Proposed timeline. The site is called "Mystery Hill" throughout.

[edit] 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 Stonehenge1996, Sunrise Publications: 0-9652630-0-2