What Not To Do

    Someone just up the road from me invited me to stop by his home on the edge of a Land Preserve to take a look at some piles of stones and the rows of stones around them. I’m thinking about just when I can actually stop by and it got me to thinking about private land owners and what to do if they suspect that there is or are Indigenous Ceremonial Stone  Landscape (CSL) features on their property – and what not to do, I suppose.

     And maybe “What Not To Do” is more important.

     So:

11.)    Don’t take it apart! The stone pile (row of stones) as is the artifact, a CSL feature. Some stone piles do turn out to be graves and a federal law prohibits digging up any grave anywhere (without permits or, as just seen recently at Standing Rock, a Presidential Proclamation). A respectful archaeologist immediately stops his or her permitted excavation when something is found that may indicate a grave. Jannie Loubser: “Excavation of Feature 1 and Stone Pile 1 was terminated as soon as prehistoric ceramics and lithics were recovered from the feature fill. The shape and dark coloring of the central Feature 1, together with a ceramic pipe bowl fragment recovered from within, strongly suggested that the feature represented a prehistoric Native American Indian grave. In compliance with NAGPRA and Georgia State laws concerning cemeteries, all work was terminated and the Forest Service was notified as lead agency for further instructions. After telephone discussions with Alan Polk from the Forest Service it was decided to back-fill the feature along with all the associated items. All artifacts, charcoal, and soil fill were carefully returned to their original locations within Feature 1. Soil was filled back into the excavated area and stones were carefully replaced on the pile...” https://www.academia.edu/14045742/An_Archaeological_and_Ethnohistorical_Appraisal_of_a_Piled_Stone_Feature_Complex_in_the_Mountains_of_North_Georgia

22.)     Don’t move it! Doug Harris of the Narragansett Indian Tribal Historic Preservation Office: “Stones, it was believed as the oral history tell us, could resonate with the voice. So if you prayed into a stone and you placed it on the earth mother’s body, you would be communicating to her and that communication or that prayer would continue to resonate. One of the things that we are very much against is movement of these stone groupings because if you move them then the prayers are broken and the powerful balance and harmony that the medicine people have sent down to us as the reason they were doing this would be broken. Then the balance, the precarious balance that we are in with our earth mother would be in worse shape, we believe.” https://www.ncptt.nps.gov/blog/ceremonial-stone-landscapes/ https://youtu.be/oZIwbvYddQs

33.)    Don’t add any stones to a SCL– just plain common sense, you could say. Some people on private property feel moved to add some Mystery as a sort of selling point for a ten dollar tour you could say: https://youtu.be/2yOGJZ_ydZA

44.)    Don’t jump into all that Pseudoscience stuff – it’s a waste of time and, especially, a waste of money. Don’t encourage Those People...

"Pseudoarchaeology can be practised intentionally or unintentionally. Archaeological frauds and hoaxes are considered intentional pseudoarchaeology. Genuine archaeological finds may be unintentionally converted to pseudoarchaeology through unscientific interpretation. (cf. confirmation bias)

Especially in the past, but also in the present, pseudoarchaeology has been motivated by racism, especially when the basic intent was to discount or deny the abilities of non-white peoples to make significant accomplishments in astronomy, architecture, sophisticated technology, ancient writing, seafaring, and other accomplishments generally identified as evidence of "civilization". Racism can be implied by attempts to attribute ancient sites and artefacts to Lost Tribes, Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact, or even extraterrestrial intelligence rather than to the intelligence and ingenuity of indigenous peoples.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoarchaeology