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Category: archaeology

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Hoaxes, frauds, and ancient artifacts?

An ancient Scottish Templar lies in state in eastern Massachusetts.
Who needs to go to Britain to see a knight lying in state on his coffin lid?
Yesterday I stopped to paint in the marshes of Westford, Massachusetts with my pal Bobbi Heath. This is low country with oaks, spruces and pines, and the foliage this week is a perfect blend of russets, golds and cool greens.
My husband was flying to Boston from a week potting around England with two of our kids. I’d skipped the trip for Plein Air Brandywine Valley. I’ve seen enough knights reposing on their coffin lids that I wasn’t concerned.
A rubbing of the Westford boulder. It may be slightly enhanced. Courtesy of the Clan Sinclair Association (USA)
We would paint until dusk and I’d collect Doug at the airport on the way home. Of course, that wasn’t what happened. Bobbi is still hobbling from her Lisfranc fracture. What started as a spattering mist developed into the cold, full-throated pissing of a late autumn rain. That’s pneumonia weather.
So, we did what artists love even better than painting: driving around looking at stuff we might paint sometime. And then Bobbi casually mentioned the Westford Knight. We have a fine St. George battling a dragon here in Maine, and I figured it was something like that.
The best photo I could get of the boulder on a dark and stormy night.
Instead, it was a large hunk of granite under a Plexiglas cover, with something unmistakably carved into its surface. Carbon dating it would be impossible, since that only works with organic material. But granite is hard, and it couldn’t have been carved without tempered steel implements. That makes the rock either a hoax like Piltdown man, or a genuine relic of pre-Columbian exploration in the New World.
The rock was first mentioned in print in 1873. At the time, it was attributed to Native Americans. By the middle of the twentieth century, it had been identified as a medieval knight complete with sword and shield.
A rubbing of the Westford Boat Rock. Courtesy of the Clan Sinclair Association (USA)
This was in part due to the influence of TC Lethbridge, English archaeologist, parapsychologist, explorer, and all-around crank—in short, just the sort of man we should have over to dinner. Lethbridge, while classically trained, came to believe that the archaeological establishment wouldn’t countenance any thinking outside the usual academic platitudes.
Lethbridge was consulted about the Westford carving, and he suggested that it represented a 14th century hand-and-a-half wheel pommel sword.
Enter the Clan Sinclair Association (USA). They believe their ancestor, Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, discovered the New World around the year 1400. Sinclair apparently landed in Nova Scotia and then potted down the coast to Massachusetts, where he wandered inland.
My last evening at Plein Air Brandywine Valley. Courtesy of Bruce McMillan.
They believe that the rock commemorates a fallen member of Sinclair’s party, Sir James Gunn, a Knight Templar. Historians counter that the Order of the Knights Templar had been publicly disbanded ninety years earlier. This presents no particular historical challenge to readers of dime-store fiction. We know that Knights Templar popped up everywhere for hundreds of years after they were banned.
There’s also a matching oval-shaped boulder in Westford’s library. It has a sailing ship and an arrow carved into its surface. “Archaeological evidence indicates this was probably carved at the same time as the Westford Knight carving,” the Sinclairs wrote. There is, of course, no archaeological evidence anywhere, because of that pesky carbon-dating problem.
There are relics all over the northeast that defy categorization, including the Spirit Pond runestones found in Phippsburg, Maine. We have proof that Vikings visited the New World. Are all these old stones fakes, or are some of them real artifacts?
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If I were younger

I’d join an archeological expedition searching for Old Norse sites in the New World.
The beach at L’Anse aux Meadows. Can you imagine landing a Norse longboat through those rocks? (Photo by Carol L. Douglas)

I do a lot of scrambling around on rocks. Over the past few years that’s become increasingly difficult. Yesterday, I had a cheilectomy on my right great toe. It’s going to be followed by the same procedure on the left foot, although whether I can squeeze that in before my first event of the season—Santa Fe Plein Air Fiestaon April 28—remains to be seen.

Hallux rigidus is not necessarily caused by old age; it can be the result of overuse injury. Me and Shaquille O’Neal, all the way.
Apparently, you can’t just saw off a piece of bone without discomfort. It hurts like hell this morning, so I will do what my doctor ordered, which is to rest and keep it elevated. This is an opportunity to catch up on my reading, starting with some Old Norse news.
Recreated settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows. (Photo by Carol L. Douglas)
Last week, Birgitta Wallace, a senior archaeologist with Parks Canada, told Live Science that she has a pretty good idea where the fabled Viking settlement of Hóp (Vinland) was located. She’s narrowed it down to an area of eastern New Brunswick, bounded by Miramichi and Chaleur Bay.
A straight line drawn between these points is about sixty miles long. A long peninsula extends out between them into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, making her guess an area of several hundred miles of remote coastline. Compared to other estimates, that’s quite specific—archaeologists have placed Hóp as far south as the Hudson River.
The large circle is where Birgitta Wallace believes HĂłp is located.  The small circle is the location of L’Anse aux Meadows.
The only verified Norse site in the New World, L’Anse aux Meadows, was discovered based on just such an educated guess.
According to the Icelandic Saga of Erik the Red, Thorfinn Karlsefni and his company found Helluland (Baffin Island), Markland(somewhere in Labrador), Kjalarnes promonatory, the Wonderstrands(possibly Labrador), StraumfjörĂ°(location unknown) and, finally, HĂłp. This last was a bountiful place, where no snow fell during winter. Not Maine, clearly.
The inhospitable landscape of northern Newfoundland. (Photo by Carol L. Douglas)
Historians had long believed that the Old Norse name Vinland meant that the settlement contained wild grapes. That meant that Hóp had to be south of New Hampshire because, with few exceptions, wild grapes don’t grow any farther north.
Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad and his wife, archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad, doubted that theory. They believed the name meant ‘land of meadows.’ Based on Eric the Red’s descriptions, they narrowed down their area of search to the northern arm of Newfoundland. In 1960, they started asking the locals if there were any old Indian sites in the area.
One of the foundations excavated by the Ingstads. (Photo by Carol L. Douglas)
In 1960, local George Decker led them to a group of mounds near the village. Residents had called this “the old Indian camp.” These grass-covered bumps turned out to be the remains of eight Norse houses, dating from 1000 AD and definitively connecting the site to the Icelandic Sagas.
Wallace is back to thinking about grapes. Chaleur Bay means “bay of torrid weather.” It’s warm compared to Maine. Grapes do grow wild there. Wallace thinks that region contains everything described as being at the legendary Hóp: wild grapes, salmon, barrier sandbars and natives who used animal-hide canoes.
Based on the Ingstads’ experience, Wallace should, by all means, scout around the bay. And if she’s successful, it will give me something to read about when I get my other foot operated on.