Re: A question about archaeolgical sterility of sites with a religious connection.

On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:46:34 +1300, Eric Stevens
<eric.stevens@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:45:05 +0000, Whiskers
<catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

---- snip -----

Here is one of the many sites relating to the Tower:
It seems straightforward to presume that plaster was not applied until
the structure was completed. Therefore it has been hypothesized that
plaster was deposited beneath the foundation during a later operation
designed to stabilize the tower at a much later date. Since Colonial
artifacts were found with the plaster, it has been suggested that the
tower was merely reinforced during Colonial times and that its initial
date of construction was actually much earlier.
http://www.unexplainedearth.com/newport.php

That article is interesting; certainly the balancing of a stone tower on a
ring of arches seems an unlikely way to build a wind-mill - but there are
European windmills with fire-places inside them, so the presence of a
fireplace doesn't preclude the possibility of a windmill being what it
was. One purpose in building arches is to save stone and thus work and
weight, quite apart from any stylistic notions.

But the use of arches requires supporting formwork for each arch until
the main body of the tower is completed to above the arches. I don't
think it saves any work. It merely complicates matters. And then there
is the problem of the foundations.

The irregularity in the shape of the building may have arisen because of
some weakness or subsidence that manifested itself in the original
'correctly' circular structure, necessitating a compromise in the placing of
one or more columns and a partial re-build - perhaps the origin of the
'plaster' found buried in the ground at the tower's base.

The small ledges at the spring of each arch look too small to support any
kind of substantial outer structure, so invoking such a structure as
obstructing the sails of a windmill doesn't work for me. Religious purpose
also seems umlikely - and astronomical alignments may be irrelevant or
coincidental. There are certainly easier ways of spotting equinoxes,
solstices, lunar tracks, etc, if you want to do such things, than building
eccentric stone structures.

It has been suggested that the tower was meant to form the core of a
norse round church, but many people agree that the small external
ledges are too small for significant structural purposes and no one
has ever found any evidence of an external structure.

Correction - Mallory claimed that he had found appropriate post holes
but _very_few_ people have accepted his claim.

Some of the small 'random' openings may be associated with the machinery
of the mill, not windows at all.

and

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:WVgE49xc8bEJ:www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/17236/page/3+newport+tower+plaster&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=13&gl=us

After arriving at Newport in 1993 and being feted by the pro-Viking
party, Jungner drilled into the mortar between the stones in the
columns of the tower, going deep so as to get past any recent mortar
that might have been applied during tuck pointing. But the samples
taken from the Newport Tower proved to be too small for conventional
14C dating. So Jungner sent them to the AMS laboratory in Aarhus,
Denmark, where samples as small as one gram of prepared mortar powder
could be dated, thanks to the fact that the AMS method requires less
than one milligram of carbon. At Aarhus, one of us (Heinemeier), being
director of that laboratory, first became involved in mortar dating.
Although a physicist, Heinemeier was already engaged in archaeological
pursuits, namely studies of the bones of Greenland Vikings.

The samples from Newport Tower were crushed, sieved and then combined
with acid, yielding carbon dioxide, which gave a date of about 1680.
This finding provided additional scientific support for the late 17th-
century date derived from the archaeological evidence. No Vikings at
this site--the tower was a Colonial windmill after all.

Or not, according to taste, it seems!

I've found these further links which shed still more light and as much
confusion, but none of them convince me that anything other than 17th
century is the right date.

<http://sinclair.quarterman.org/archive/2002/03/msg00068.html>
Bias vs bias. I like it.
<http://www.ramtops.co.uk/newport.html>
Doug Weller is firmly of the opinion that the tower was built by
Arnold as a windmill.
<http://www.chronognostic.org/over_touro_park.html>
<http://www.neara.org/CARLSON/newporttower.htm>

Apart from anything else, if such a substantial building were already
present before the first British colonists began to settle in the area, why
was no mention made of it even in passing? Surely it would have been an
obvious land-mark and talking-point, even if there was nothing mysterious
about it? That it seems to spring into history for the first time in a
late 17th century will, is a strong indication that it simply wasn't there
much before then.

Equally puzzling, if the tower was built by the early settlers, why is
there no mention of its construction in the early records? Especially
in those early days, it's construction was not a task too trivial to
be worth mentioning.




Eric Stevens



Eric Stevens
.

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