Dighton Rock: Difference between revisions

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[[Image:Dighton rock (nonslutty version).jpg|thumb|right|options|Dighton rock and Seth Eastman, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's illustrator<ref name= "ne history">New England Historical Society n.d. The Mystery of Dighton Rock – ‘No man alive knows…’. Electronic document, http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/the-mystery-of-dighton-rock-no-man-alive-knows/, accessed December 12, 2019.</ref>]]
[[Image:Dighton rock (nonslutty version).jpg|thumb|right|options|Dighton rock and Seth Eastman, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's illustrator<ref name= "ne history">New England Historical Society n.d. The Mystery of Dighton Rock – ‘No man alive knows…’. Electronic document, http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/the-mystery-of-dighton-rock-no-man-alive-knows/, accessed December 12, 2019.</ref>]]
Dighton Rock (see also, ''the Dighton Writing Rock, the Assonet Monument'') is a petroglyphic boulder located in Massachusetts along the northwesternly corner of Assonet River<ref name ="delabarre">Delabarre, Edmund Burke
Dighton Rock (see also, ''the Dighton Writing Rock, the Assonet Monument'') is a petroglyphic boulder located in Massachusetts along the northwesternly corner of Assonet River<ref name ="delabarre">Delabarre, Edmund Burke
1928, Dighton Rock: A Study of the Written Rocks of New England. Walter Neale, New York.</ref> in an area that was orignally occupied by the indigenous [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquin_people Omamiwinini] people. <ref name ="tribe">Native Languages n.d. Omamiwinini First Nation. Electronic document, http://www.native-languages.org/definitions/omamiwinini.htm, accessed December 13, 2019.</ref><ref name="observations">Rau, Chas
1928, Dighton Rock: A Study of the Written Rocks of New England. Walter Neale, New York.</ref> in an area that was originally occupied by the indigenous [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquin_people Omamiwinini] people. <ref name ="tribe">Native Languages n.d. Omamiwinini First Nation. Electronic document, http://www.native-languages.org/definitions/omamiwinini.htm, accessed December 13, 2019.</ref><ref name="observations">Rau, Chas
     1878 OBSERVATIONS ON THE DIGHTON ROCK INSCRIPTION. ''The American Antiquarian: A Quarterly Journal Devoted to Early American History, Ethnology and Archaeology'' 1(1):38.
     1878 OBSERVATIONS ON THE DIGHTON ROCK INSCRIPTION. ''The American Antiquarian: A Quarterly Journal Devoted to Early American History, Ethnology and Archaeology'' 1(1):38.
</ref> Although modern archaeologists agree that the Dighton rock petroglyphs were probably inscribed by the indigenous people of the area, Dighton rock has been a source of controversy due to assertions by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoarchaeology pseudoarchaeologists] that it is evidence of pre-Columbian contact with indigenous nations in the Americas.<ref name ="feder">Feder, Kenneth L.
</ref> Although modern archaeologists agree that the Dighton rock petroglyphs were probably inscribed by the indigenous people of the area, Dighton rock has been a source of controversy due to assertions by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoarchaeology pseudoarchaeologists] that it is evidence of pre-Columbian contact with indigenous nations in the Americas.<ref name ="feder">Feder, Kenneth L.

Revision as of 21:10, 13 December 2019

by Ayla Schwartz

Dighton rock and Seth Eastman, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's illustrator[1]

Dighton Rock (see also, the Dighton Writing Rock, the Assonet Monument) is a petroglyphic boulder located in Massachusetts along the northwesternly corner of Assonet River[2] in an area that was originally occupied by the indigenous Omamiwinini people. [3][4] Although modern archaeologists agree that the Dighton rock petroglyphs were probably inscribed by the indigenous people of the area, Dighton rock has been a source of controversy due to assertions by pseudoarchaeologists that it is evidence of pre-Columbian contact with indigenous nations in the Americas.[5]

History

Discovery and Early Reception

Early photo of Dighton Rock[6]

Dighton rock was discovered shortly after the Europeans arrived in Massachusetts and quickly became an obsession of the burgeoning nation.[7] Dighton rock attracted the attention of some of the greatest minds and scholars of colonial America, from the infamous Henry Rowe Schoolcraft to George Washington himself.[1] Pseudoarchaeological beliefs popped up and spread quickly, beginning in the 1680s when the Reverend John Danforth, an early documenter of Dighton Rock, became convinced the petroglyphs inscribed on the rock were written in Phonecian.[7] Danforth sent his theories as well as an illustration of the Dighton rock petroglyphs to the Royal Society of London for their opinions but never received a response.[7] Samuel Mather claimed his father, Cotton Mather, was convinced that the glyphs on Dighton Rock were carved in Hebrew, although Mather himself believed they were Phonecian.[8] In 1837, Carl Christian Rafn proposed that the Dighton Rock was a Norse runic stone marking Massachusetts as the mythical "Vinland" chronicled in the Norse sagas,[7] which a later scholar, Finn Magnusen, translated as "Northmen under Thorfinn took possession of this land."[4] Most famously, psychology professor Edmund Burke Delabarre wrote in his book Dighton Rock: A Study of the Written Rocks of New England that he believed the Dighton Rock carvings to be the work of lost Portuguese sailor Miguel Corte-Real, which he "deciphered" as "Miguel Cortereal by the will of God, here Chief of the Indians."[2] This particular claim has inspired a pseudoarchaeological community based on Portuguese ethnic pride in the United States, giving Portuguese Americans a sense of place in the U.S. in much the same way that purported evidence of Norse settlements originally helped Danish settlers find a place amongst the white settlers.[9] To this day, Portuguese Americans gather at Dighton Rock to celebrate their cultural heritage.[9]

Dighton Rock was (officially) linked to the indigenous population in 1989 with the publishing of Garrick Mallery's 800-page report on the "Picture-Writing of the American Indians," which conclusively linked the indigenous past of Dighton Rock with the Native present of the Omamiwinini.[8] Although discourse about Dighton Rock has settled down since Mallery's report, it is far from dead. As Annette Kolodny admits, "myths die hard."[8] A 2002 book, Gavin Menzies brought back the old colonial belief in Fusang, a Chinese prehistoric settlement purported to have been in the Americas, and proposed the Dighton Rock pictographs were actually a form of archaic Chinese.[7]

Despite continued disagreement between the archaeological community and the public about its origins, and some resistance from the archaeological community, Dighton Rock was removed from its original river bed in 1963 and placed within the Dighton Rock State Park museum.[7] It has since been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Petroglyphs

Various drawings of the Dighton rock petroglyphs[10]

As expected given the countless number of languages individuals have claimed the Dighton Rock petroglyphs are written in, there are quite a few interpreations and "translations" of what the Dighton Rock petroglyphs say.

Dighton rock was deposited in the riverbed towards the end of the last ice age, and is "composed of a gray-brown crystalline sandstone it has the form of a slanted, six-sided block." Its inscriptions are "carved on its trapezoidal face" and "the carved surface is inclined 70 degrees to the northwest and faced the bay."[7] The glyphs themselves are a complex set of images, shaped, and symbols, that even early in Dighton Rock's colonial history scholars agreed were Omamiwinini.[4] A Omamiwinini tribesperson recorded by Chas Rau as being named Chingwauk at one point "plausibly interpreted" the pictograph for Henry Row Schoolcraft on a visit to Dighton Rock, but his indigenous translation was not recorded by Mr. Rau or Mr. Schoolcraft, nor was it referenced in any other later publications on Dighton Rock.[4]

Dighton Rock's inscription was later translated by Professor Finn Magnusen, who believed the glyphs were Norse runes, as reading "Northmen under Thorfinn took possession of this land."[4] However, Magnusen's contemporaries called the legitimacy of his translation into question on the grounds that critical analysis of his previous work had found that the "runes" he looked at were “simply the natural cracks on the decayed surface of a trap dike filing up a rent in a granitic formation,” leading some scholar to as if his translation was genuine or simply a symptom of an overactive imagination.[4] John Davis proposed a more reasonable interpretation in his address to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston.[11] Davis pointed to similarity between the triangles drawn on Dighton Rock and a symbol used by Canadian indigenous tribes to mark the entrance of a particular type of hunting trap. Using that as a jumping off point for interpretation, Davis suggested that the glyphs might be a depiction of a hunting scene, perhaps used to celebrate and keep track of hunting exploits.[11]


Pseudoarchaeogical Narrative

Pre-Columbian Settlement of North America

What it was What was so compelling about it Myths Die Hard

An Archaeological Response

How the Archaeological Record Works

The Flaws and Inconsistencies in Pre-Columbian Contact "theories"

Dighton Rock as (bad) evidence

Lithograph of Dighton Rock[2]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 New England Historical Society n.d. The Mystery of Dighton Rock – ‘No man alive knows…’. Electronic document, http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/the-mystery-of-dighton-rock-no-man-alive-knows/, accessed December 12, 2019.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Delabarre, Edmund Burke 1928, Dighton Rock: A Study of the Written Rocks of New England. Walter Neale, New York.
  3. ↑ Native Languages n.d. Omamiwinini First Nation. Electronic document, http://www.native-languages.org/definitions/omamiwinini.htm, accessed December 13, 2019.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 Rau, Chas 1878 OBSERVATIONS ON THE DIGHTON ROCK INSCRIPTION. The American Antiquarian: A Quarterly Journal Devoted to Early American History, Ethnology and Archaeology 1(1):38.
  5. ↑ Feder, Kenneth L. 2010 Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atlantis To The Walam Olum. Greenwood, California.
  6. ↑ Dighton Historical Society 2014 Dighton Rock. Electronic document, https://dightonhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com/, accessed December 12, 2019.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 Native American Net Roots 2012 Dighton Rock. Electronic document, http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/1217, accessed December 4, 2019
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Kolodny, Annette 2003 Fictions of American Prehistory: Indians, Archeology, and National Origin Myths. Duke University Press 75(4): 693-721
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Hunter, Douglas 2017 The Place of Stone: Dighton Rock and the Erasure of America's Indigenous Past. The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
  10. ↑ McDermott, Alicia 2015 Who Made the Petroglyphs on the Mysterious Dighton Rock? Electronic document, https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/who-made-petroglyphs-mysterious-dighton-rock-004991, accessed December 12 2019.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Davis, John 1809 AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE INSCRIPTION ON THE DIGHTON ROCK. American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston. Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 3(1):19
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