Re: Ramah chert fluted point confuses Vermont

On Aug 28, 11:25 am, Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
In addition a 20 by 30 foot cairn deep within the Green Mountain
National Forest, some stone megaliths identified with calendars and a
movie being made all suggest the need for someone to contact the
Memorial University of Newfoundland and learn about the Maritime
Archaic culture.

Anyone know when Lake Champlain was a salty sea?

A mystery in the Green Mountains

By Susan Green
Special to the Free Press

August 17, 2007
Deep within the Green Mountain National Forest, an enormous pile of
rocks has people puzzled. In "Hidden Landscapes," a documentary
screening twice this weekend during the Lake Champlain Maritime
Festival on the Burlington waterfront, a group of scientists are seen
observing this 20-by-30-foot cairn.

Among them is Stephen Loring, an anthropologist who conducts
archaeological, ethno-historical and paleo-environmental research for
the Arctic Studies Center at the Smithsonian National Museum of
Natural History in Washington, D.C. "I think we all agree that we
don't know what's going on here," he says to the other men
scrutinizing the mysterious structure. "It's so perplexing."

The film, a work-in-progress by Ted Timreck, is full of details about
the original inhabitants of this region. With the suspense of a great
detective novel, his cinematic saga challenges long-held assumptions
about Champlain Valley civilization through the examination of stone.

Timreck, a New York City-based filmmaker and Smithsonian research
associate, traces Loring's three-decade quest: In the late 1970s he
came across a translucent Native American fluted point near the
Missisquoi River, but did not identify its genesis for another 25
years.

Previously, Smithsonian scientists thought native people from these
shores had reached northern Labrador 4,000 years ago. In 2004 Loring
experienced a breakthrough leading to a different hypothesis. He
determined that the Vermont point was at least 10,000 years old and
fashioned from "Ramah chert," a volcanic rock found only on the coast
of Labrador.

"That's 1,600 nautical miles," Timreck notes. "The theory is that
Paleolithic people brought the Ramah chert here by boat when Lake
Champlain was still a sea."

The frozen configurations of the last Ice Age mean these ancestors
"had to adapt to hunting Arctic animals," he adds, "so developing full
Arctic maritime capability was essential. A culture that could do that
is, by implication, a gee-whiz phenomenon."

Artifacts such as the Mississquoi point are generally considered
"Clovis," a name derived from the first prehistoric spear tips found
anywhere in the United States; they were excavated during the 1930s in
Clovis, N.M.

The term Clovis designates an era when the first human beings
supposedly migrated to North America from Siberia, no earlier than
13,000 years ago. Thanks to recent eureka moments, that geography and
timeframe are both in dispute.

"The Siberians are thought to have evolved into Clovis people,"
Timreck explains. "The question of pre-Clovis in the New World is the
big issue now, however. Who they might have been is up in the air."

While an identity remains elusive, he acknowledges, "We're finding
artifacts that carbon-date at 16,000 to 17,000 years old."

Consequently, experts have begun to revisit the former notion that
North Americans didn't build boats until about 7,000 years ago.
"Seafaring was supposed to be the skill only of smart Europeans,"
Timreck says. "But all kinds of little discover ies begin to shatter
the overarching idea that the Clovis were the first people to arrive.
History now opens up in a different way and it's all about the
Champlain Basin."

Loring surmises that the Ramah chert point may have been the business
end of a harpoon for hunting walruses, seals and whales in the salty
Champlain Sea, according to Timreck. (If this sounds absurd, check out
the skeleton of a 12,000-year-old beluga whale -- dubbed Charlotte for
the Chittenden County town where it was unearthed in 1849 --that's
exhibited at the University of Vermont's Perkins Geology Museum in
Delehanty Hall.)

Timreck's narration compares "the maritime revolution of the last Ice
Age" to the space race of the 1960s, with peripatetic paleo-indians
akin to 20th-century astronauts and cosmonauts.

The film includes two prominent Vermonters. The late Jim Peterson, an
associate professor of anthropology at UVM, was pivotal in persuading
the scientific community to take notice.Abenakitribal historian Fred
Wiseman, an archaeologist and chair of the humanities department at
Johnson State College, continues to collaborate with Timreck.

Many researchers are intrigued by the 10,800-year-old bone sewing
needle, found somewhere out West, that Smithsonian paleo-indian/paleo-
ecology program field director Pegi Jodry displays in the film. "It
indicates the use of fine thread and very thin materials," Timreck
says.

Wiseman senses a profound implication. "These folks were a heck of a
lot more advanced than anyone assumed," he suggests. "The legacy from
Jim Petersen is the idea of natives in cloth, not just in buckskin and
beads. It's a new image. "

"The needle tells it all," Timreck muses. "Everything else is just
stones in the ground."

Perhaps, but what magnificent stones they seem to be.

Another focus of "Hidden Landscapes" is the long-simmering controversy
about who was responsible for the stone chambers that dot the
southeast Vermont countryside. State archaeological officials contend
they are colonial root cellars, while others have insisted these
megaliths were the work of Bronze Age Celtic mariners. Initially,
nobody suspected an even older and more homegrown source: indigenous
Pleolithic people.

"There is evidence of native stonework," Petersen says on camera. "We
have underappreciated native capabilities."

Timreck has a similar assessment: "Nobody had dreamed of Eastern
native peoples as being that sophisticated."

For Wiseman, the issue is affirmation. "Native people in the Northeast
were always believed to be exceedingly primitive," he points out. "Yet
we've got some of the earliest mounds in this area. But do you see
that mentioned in anthropology textbooks? Hell, no!"

In the film, a Narragansett medicine woman named Ella Sekatau
underscores that opinion: "They don't want to give the Indians credit
for anything!" Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, two men aerospace
engineer Byron Dix and oceanographer Jim Mavor, both now deceased
methodically investigated a Windsor County megalith. They called it
Calendar One, because of the site's probable purpose for unknown
builders at an undetermined time, and took precise measurements during
solstices and equinoxes to discern astronomical alignments.

Similar stone structures have been identified across the country and
some people envision them as ceremonial sacred spaces. "These sites
are inhabited by spirits," theorizes Rosita Worl, an anthropologist
from the Tlingit tribe in Alaska interviewed by Timreck. "Shamans
would come here to commune with the spirit world." "There are secrets
here, perhaps," speculates Evan T. Pritchard, a history professor in
upstate New York with an Algonquin Micmac heritage.

Timreck's footage of the Dix-Mavor collaboration dates back to 1976.
"Even if the stone ruins weren't constructed by Native Americans, it's
utterly insane to think this was done without their knowledge, unless
we foolishly believe the United States was a totally uninhabited
wilderness," he says.

"Hidden Landscapes" -- on tap at 7 p.m. today and Saturday at the Lake
& College Waterfront Performing Arts Center -- is two hours long. It's
the first segment of what Timreck plans as a six-part documentary that
he'll finish by July 2009, which marks the 400th anniversary of French
explorer Samuel de Champlain's "discovery" of the lake that bears his
name.

For that quadricentennial, the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center
intends to "tell as much of theAbenakistory as we can," says
executive director Phelan Fretz. "It's a rich moment when there's a
shift in how academics think about history. How wonderful that we can
help facilitate that conversation." He's also pleased that the Timreck
film "has opened doors for us at the Smithsonian."

While creating programs for the PBS shows "Nova" and "American
Masters," Timreck began his association with the Smithsonian in the
1970s. The prestigious institution has since sent him sent all over
the planet Iceland, Russia, Scandinavia, Alaska, the Baffin Islands to
document what its scientists are doing. In 1979, that work took him to
Labrador, where he met Stephen Loring.

Timreck marvels that Loring's revelations about Vermont are so new
that "science has to go back to the drawing board to figure out what
happened. There's no synthesis yet, except in a movie like this.
People were in these hills, even though nobody so far understands how
they got here or why. This place couldn't have been empty."


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Ramah chert fluted point confuses Vermont
    ... National Forest, some stone megaliths identified with calendars and a ... about Champlain Valley civilization through the examination of stone. ... Timreck explains. ... Jim Petersen is the idea of natives in cloth, ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Ramah chert fluted point confuses Vermont
    ... In addition a 20 by 30 foot cairn deep within the Green Mountain ... The film, a work-in-progress by Ted Timreck, is full of details about ... about Champlain Valley civilization through the examination of stone. ... Jim Petersen is the idea of natives in cloth, ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: Ramah chert fluted point confuses Vermont
    ... Champlain basin 14 through 10 kya, ... The film, a work-in-progress by Ted Timreck, is full of details about ... about Champlain Valley civilization through the examination of stone. ... Jim Petersen is the idea of natives in cloth, ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: Ramah chert fluted point confuses Vermont
    ... Champlain basin 14 through 10 kya, ... during that period it's referred to as the Champlain Sea. ... The film, a work-in-progress by Ted Timreck, is full of details about ... about Champlain Valley civilization through the examination of stone. ...
    (sci.archaeology)