More on the Newport Tower
- From: Eric Stevens <eric.stevens@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 09:10:51 +1300
http://www.newportdailynews.com/articles/2006/10/17/news/news6.txt
Archaeologists hope to uncover Touro Park's past
By Sean Flynn/Daily News staff
NEWPORT - D'Elayne Coleman came from Guisborough, Nova Scotia, to
Newport on Monday to witness the beginning of excavation work around
the Old Stone Mill, the first archaeological dig allowed at the site
by the Newport City Council in almost 60 years.
Coleman, as president of the Prince Henry Sinclair Society of North
America, has a stake in the archaeological dig. She believes that
Scottish explorer Sinclair, the Earl of Orkney and a Knight Templar,
sailed to America in 1396, almost 100 years before Christopher
Columbus, and spent at least a year here. Among the artifacts he and
his crew left here, she believes, is the Old Stone Mill.
Sinclair advocates seemed to have an edge in numbers at Monday's
groundbreaking ceremony. But they could have been matched by any
number of other advocates touting different theories.
Through the decades, people have said the Newport tower was once a
windmill, a round church, a watchtower, a warehouse, a market hall, a
celestial observatory or a lighthouse. The builders supposedly were
Nordic Vikings, Irish monks, Welshmen, Portuguese explorers, Dutch
adventurers or even 15th-century Chinese sailors stranded in America.
Coleman claimed that the Sinclair voyage is the only pre-Columbus
voyage that was documented in detail. Antonio and Carlo Zeno,
Venetians who commanded Sinclair's fleet, left narratives and maps
that document they were in Nova Scotia and New England, according to
Coleman and others who present Monday.
The most accepted theory locally seems to be that Gov. Benedict Arnold
built the tower as part of a windmill. This Benedict Arnold, who lived
in the 1600s, was the great-grandfather of the Revolutionary War
traitor with the same name.
Janet F. Barstad, president of Chronognostic Research Foundation of
Tempe, Ariz., is the driving force behind this latest archaeological
dig.
"I've never had an agenda on this," she said. "What we find is what we
find."
People have questioned why the tower doesn't look like other windmills
built in this area or in Europe at that time, or why, for example, it
has a fireplace that would be dangerous in a windmill.
The fine flour in the air would have been combustible and could have
even caused explosions, Barstad has said. Wooden windmills, which had
timbers joined by pegs, were common in the 17th and 18th centuries in
this area, but not stone towers, advocates for a different theory
argue.
Barstad, who is a historian, said an acquaintance showed her a photo
of the Old Stone Mill while she was working in Arizona in 2000. He
asked her to guess where it was, and from what time period. She
guessed it was a 12th-century structure in Europe.
She visited the tower for the first time in January 2003, coming to
Newport after attending a meeting of the Society for Historical
Archaeology in Providence.
"When I saw it, I thought, 'This is too much. I've got to do something
about that,'" she recalled.
The upcoming dig
It took Barstad three and a half years to get permission to dig from
local officials.
"I give the Newport City Council a lot of credit for picking up the
challenge," she said.
Mayor John J. Trifero and council members Mary C. Connolly and Stephen
R. Coyne used trowels to screen the first shovels of dirt that were
removed Monday.
During the 1940s, an earlier City Council gave the Society for
American Archaeology permission to conduct excavations around the
tower. Fragments of a millstone were found in a pit inside the tower,
and none of the fragments dated earlier than the 1600s.
An experienced senior archaeology student at Harvard University,
William S. Godfrey, carried out the practical work of that excavation.
He concluded that "either Governor Arnold built the tower, or one of
his contemporaries did." His 1951 doctoral thesis was entitled,
"Digging a Tower and Laying a Ghost."
Barstad's group prepared for the dig in a wider area around the tower
using "noninvasive technology."
They hired Dan Lynch, an archaeologist with Soil Sight LLC, to survey
the area with an electronic device that uses electrical resistivity to
form images of what lies underneath the ground. He also used
ground-penetrating radar. With these readings, he used computer
imaging to form cross sections of "anomalies" that lie beneath the
surface.
The first dig is taking place over an oval shaped "anomaly." These
"anomalies" seem to be stone foundations.
Ray Pasquariello, a state-licensed archaeologist with Gray & Pape Inc.
of Wakefield, is overseeing the dig. Under the agreement with the City
Council, he will excavate 1-meter-by 1-meter holes. He will not be
able to have more than four holes open at one time. He must fill holes
in before he digs new ones, and is limited to 25 holes. The group has
one month to complete its work.
Pasquariello is optimistic, because of the results of the high-tech
surveys done previously.
"The geophysical results are excellent," he said. "We'll be able to
identify what's here."
He has a crew of four working this week and expects to have eight at
the site next week.
Kate Johnson, who grew up in Little Compton and is a graduate of
Middletown High School, is working for Gray & Pape. She is working on
her master's degree in historical archaeology at the University of
Massachusetts at Boston.
"This is so exciting," she said. "It will be fun to find out what's
under there. Everyone is watching this site."
Some are watching more closely than others.
Steve Volukas of Hyannis, Mass., is a volunteer working at the site
and an advocate of the Sinclair theory. He plans to film as much of
the excavation as he can.
"If they hit something, it's important to have it on film," he said.
Eric Stevens
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