Ceremonial stone landscape

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Ceremonial Stone Landscapes or Ceremonial landscapes are monuments using stone, and often earth, on a sufficiently large scale to effectively create a landscape. They are a feature of many cultures, including the Neolithic culture in Eurasia, the Nazca of South America, and Native American cultures.

Famous examples include the complexes centred on Stonehenge and Avebury of neolithic England, the Nazca Lines of Peru (200 BCE to 700 CE), and the Carnac stones of Brittany, 4500-3000 BCE.

[edit] Native American sites

The term is used by USET^[1], for certain stone work sites in eastern North America. Elements often found at these sites include dry stone walls, rock piles (sometimes referred to as cairns), stone chambers, unusually-shaped boulders, split boulders with stones inserted in the split, and boulders propped up off the ground with smaller rocks. While neither the age of these sites nor the idea of their creation by indigenous peoples has been accepted generally, interest in the sites is increasing. This interest is generated in part by USET's Resolution #2007:037^[2]

Sections of the USET resolution describing these sites read as follows:

"within the ancestral territories of the USET Tribes there exist sacred ceremonial stone landscapes and their stone structures which are of particular cultural value to certain member Tribes;"

"for thousands of years before the immigration of Europeans, the medicine people of the USET Tribal ancestors used these sacred landscapes to sustain the people's reliance on Mother Earth and the spirit energies of balance and harmony"

"whether these stone structures are massive or small structures, stacked, stone rows, or effigies, these prayers in stone are often mistaken by archaeologists and State Historic Preservation Officers (SHPOs) as the efforts of farmers clearing stones for agricultural or wall building purposes"

The resolution goes on to request that the federal government work to understand and preserve the stone landscapes.

[edit] Controversies over sites

For years amateur enthusiasts have sought out and documented these stone sites, often attributing them to Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. Members of the New England Antiquities Research Association, for example, have visited and researched such sites in New England over many decades and discussed many theories of their creation.

Some of the better known sites that may be examples of ceremonial stone landscapes are the Gungywamp site, America's Stonehenge (in its original condition), and the Oley Hills site [[3]] in Berks county, Pennsylvania. The Oley Hills site, which features huge shaped cairns, some thought to be animal effigies, and snaking walls that incorporate unusually-shaped boulders, is currently in private hands and not open to the public. In all three cases, theories of origin such as farmers clearing stones for agriculture, Viking outposts, and visits by Irish monks have been put forward.

Many other sites fitting the general description of the ceremonial stone landscapes exist. In North Smithfield, Rhode Island and in the town of Montague, Massachusetts, controversies have arisen when development threatened to destroy sites thought to fall into this category. As time goes on, many more such cases are likely to arise and cause the legitimacy of the statements in the USET resolution to be questioned and examined.

[edit] References