Dighton Rock
by Ayla Schwartz
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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 orignally 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
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]
Popular Press
Archaeological Community
Petroglyphs
Pseudoarchaeogical Narrative
Pre-Columbian Settlement of North America
An Archaeological Response
How the Archaeological Record Works
The Flaws and Inconsitancies in Pre-Columbian Contact "theories"
Dighton Rock as (bad) evidence
References
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Delabarre, Edmund Burke 1928, Dighton Rock: A Study of the Written Rocks of New England. Walter Neale, New York.
- ↑ Native Languages n.d. Omamiwinini First Nation. Electronic document, http://www.native-languages.org/definitions/omamiwinini.htm, accessed December 13, 2019.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 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.
- ↑ Feder, Kenneth L. 2010 Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atlantis To The Walam Olum. Greenwood, California.
- ↑ Dighton Historical Society 2014 Dighton Rock. Electronic document, https://dightonhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com/, accessed December 12, 2019.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Native American Net Roots 2012 Dighton Rock. Electronic document, http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/1217, accessed December 4, 2019
- ↑ Kolodny, Annette 2003 Fictions of American Prehistory: Indians, Archeology, and National Origin Myths. Duke University Press 75(4): 693-721
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.