Challenging traditional and long-standing understandings, this volume provides an important new lens for interpreting stone structures that had previously been attributed to settler colonialism. Instead, the contributors to this volume argue that these locations are sacred Indigenous sites.
This volume introduces readers to eastern North America's Indigenous ceremonial stone landscapes (CSLs) - sacred sites whose principal identifying characteristics are built stone structures that cluster within specific physical landscapes. Our Hidden Landscapes presents these often unrecognized sites as significant cultural landscapes in need of protection and preservation.
In this book, Native American authors provide perspectives on the cultural meaning and significance of CSLs and their characteristics, while professional archaeologists and anthropologists provide a variety of approaches for better understanding, protecting, and preserving them. The chapters present overwhelming evidence in the form of oral tradition, historic documentation, ethnographies, and archaeological research that these important sites created and used by Indigenous peoples are deserving of protection.
This work enables archaeologists, historians, conservationists, foresters, and members of the general public to recognize these important ritual sites.
Contributors
Nohham Rolf Cachat-Schilling
Robert DeFosses
James Gage
Mary Gage
Doug Harris
Julia A. King
Lucianne Lavin
Johannes (Jannie) H. N. Loubser
Frederick W. Martin
Norman Muller
Charity Moore Norton
Paul A. Robinson
Laurie W. Rush
Scott M. Strickland
Elaine Thomas
Kathleen Patricia Thrane
Matthew Victor Weiss
Foreword by Laurie Weinstein
Introduction
Lucianne Lavin and Elaine Thomas
Part I. Indigenous Perspectives on the Meaning and Significance of Ceremonial Stone Landscapes
. When the Landscape Speaks for Itself, What Do We Learn?
Doug Harris
2. Markings of Ancestral Pathways: A Native Perspective
Elaine Thomas
3. Unseen Borders and Ways of Knowing: Northeastern Algonquian Sacred Lands
Nohham Rolf Cachat-Schilling
Part II. Academic Perspectives on Understanding, Protecting, and Preserving Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscapes
4. Obligations of Place: Engaging with Tribal Historic Preservation Offices in New England to Preserve and Protect Ceremonial Stone Landscapes
Paul A. Robinson
5. 'So You Believe in Aliens, Too?' An Anthropologist Looks at Stone Features in the North American Northeast and the Archaeologists Who Do and Do Not Study Them
Laurie W. Rush
Introduction to Stone Removal and Disposal Practices in Agriculture and Farming
James E. Gage
7. Ceremonial Landscapes in the Chesapeake
Julia A. King and Scott M. Strickland
8. Stones and Their Places: An Application of Landscape Theory to Ceremonial Stone Landscapes of West Virginia
Matthew Victor Weiss and Charity Moore Norton
9. Piled Stone Features of Jackson County, Georgia
Johannes H. N. Loubser
Part III. Case Studies of Ceremonial Stone Landscapes
. A Sacred Space on a Hilltop in Harwinton, Connecticut
Robert DeFosses
Interpreting Row-Linked Boulder Sites from Georgia to New England
Norman Muller
2. Historic Ceremonial Structures
Mary Gage
3. A Theoretical Model of the Moon and the Milky Way at Ancient Meeting Places
Frederick W. Martin
4. Mythologies of Light and Cast Shadow Within Northeastern Stone Chambers
Kathleen Patricia Thrane
Contributors
Index
