Barry Fell

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Barry Fell (born Howard Barraclough Fell on June 6, 1917 in Lewes, Sussex, England; died on April 21, 1994, of heart failure in San Diego, California) was a professor of invertebrate zoology at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. His primary research was on starfish and sea urchins; however, Fell is also widely known for his controversial work in New World epigraphy.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Epigraphy 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Biography

Fell moved to New Zealand with his mother in the early 1920s, after his father, who was a merchant seaman, died in a shipboard fire. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh in 1941, after which he served in the British Army during World War II. In 1946 he returned to New Zealand where he resumed his academic career. In 1964 he joined the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, where he stayed until retirement in 1979.

[edit] Epigraphy

Though Fell was an accomplished marine biologist at Harvard University, he is best known for his work on epigraphy. This interest began early in his career with a study of Polynesian petroglyphs published in 1940. His most famous work came much later, starting in 1976 with the publication of the book America BC, in which he proposed translations of alleged inscriptions found on rock surfaces and artifacts in North and South America that he believed to be written in Old World scripts and languages. He followed up this work in 1980 with Saga America and in 1982 with Bronze Age America. Fell's work led to the establishment of several amateur epigraphic associations such as the "Epigraphic Society" and the "Midwestern Epigraphic Society".^{[citation needed]}

One example of Fell's claims is his contention that Irish monks reached North America centuries before Columbus. This is based on Fell's translation, published in the magazine Wonderful West Virginia in 1983, of two rock-cut inscriptions located at archaeological sites in Wyoming County, West Virginia.^[1] According to Fell, these inscriptions narrate the story of Christ's nativity and are written in an old Irish script called Celtic Ogham (also referred to as Ogam) dating back to the 6th or 8th century AD.^[2] This led to the publication of various articles in the journal The West Virginia Archeologist highly critical of Fell's conclusions and methodology, including a 1983 article by archaeologist and historian W. Hunter Lesser describing Fell's claims as pseudoscientific and unreliable,^[3] and a 1989 article by lawyers Monroe Oppenheimer and Willard Wirtz that relies on the opinions of academic archaeologists and linguists to dispute that the inscription is written in Ogam script, and which accuses Fell of deliberate fraud.^[4]

Fell's epigraphic work has not been well-received in academia.^{[5] [6]} Critics of Fell's work have routinely dismissed him as an amateur, pointing out his lack of formal training in ancient scripts and languages.^[7] Criticism of Fell is not limited to academia, as some of Fell's critics themselves lack professional backgrounds in archaeology or linguistics, such as Oppenheimer and Wirtz.^[8]

Critics of Dr. Fell have pointed out that he seemed to jump to conclusions, and "to translate ancient languages to English with apparent ease" that was not typical of a critical analysis.^{[citation needed]}

Richard D. Flavin wrote that:

"Fell often worked from material mailed to him, which he reacted to (read: "deciphered") without checking further. This seems to be a general complaint regarding his epigraphic work. He was an accomplished scholastic, well published, who knew the rigors of academic argument and presentation, yet with his epigraphic work Fell seldom stepped away from his desk to research an item or view it in person. Such pervasive carelessness (or, as some say, arrogance) marred his efforts and induced a negative reaction in most professionals. Which is unfortunate, as he had some interesting ideas.^[9]

David Kelley, an archaeologist at the University of Calgary who is credited with a major breakthrough in the decipherment of Mayan glyphs, complained about Fell in a 1990 essay:

"Fell's work [contains] major academic sins, the three worst being distortion of data, inadequate acknowledgment of predecessors, and lack of presentation of alternative views."^[10]

In the same essay, Kelley went on to acknowledge that, "I have no personal doubts that some of the inscriptions which have been reported [by Fell] are genuine Celtic ogham."^[11]

Having acknowledged Fell's shortcomings, Kelley concluded that, "Despite my occasional harsh criticism of Fell's treatment of individual inscriptions, it should be recognized that without Fell's work there would be no [North American] ogham problem to perplex us. We need to ask not only what Fell has done wrong in his epigraphy, but also where we have gone wrong as archaeologists in not recognizing such an extensive European presence in the New World."^[12]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Royal Society of New Zealand: Howard Barraclough Fell
• Council for West Virginia Archaeology (1989): A Linguistic Analysis of Some West Virginia Petroglyphs
• Yinka Fene Language Institute: Is Carrier Celtic?
• Epigraphic Society
• Midwestern Epigraphic Society
• New England Antiquities Research Association
• Equinox Project: His life and work