Anarchaeology.com

[DarmonVing]

While I was out in the woods yesterday looking for an old site of mine that had what might be a triangular fire pit, I came across what might be an unfinished Chamber...

There were a few Chambers in the Hudson Valley that seemed to have what we suspected to be sealed off rooms in the back of them but didn't have the right equipment to confirm it. This one kind of has a similar layout as what a few of the chambers have but I wont know for sure until I can get in touch with a few of the experts around here and map out the site.

Here's a few pictures of it that I was able to take of it before I had to see if I could locate the fire pit and try to find the nearest trail so that I could accurately mark its location since my gps was on the fritz so that I could find it again...











The second room has a broke triangle in one of its wall sections and that usually means that it was supposed to be for a body burial so I doubt it's going to turn out to be some colonial foundation...



These people also had a thing for pink granite and another wall section had this nice piece of granite in it...



I'm not sure why it was abandoned but they might not of had enough manpower for some reason to quarry the roof slabs so they most likely buried the body in this oval shaped pile of stones less than a hundred yards away that was definitely disturbed for some reason... I'm kind of thinking that it might have been looted so I don't think that I'm gonna find anything interesting there...



Before I found the possible Chamber, I also found these two stones not far from a nice little clearing...





And after I found the possible Chamber, I also found another one of my lost sites along the same ridgeline... and when I got up to the highest point of the ridgeline, I finally found that damned triangular depression that I've been trying to find for over a week now...

[DarmonVing]

Well after two days of rain, I was finally able to go back to the site and map it out and take measurements. I also swept the area with my metal detector and turned up nothing metallic which is a good sign... The one thing I did forget to do while I was out there was to check to see what the floor of the structure was composed of since most stone chambers have solid stone slab floors.

The entrance is facing east and the back wall has a perfect north south orientation... I took a bearing off that part of the wall and thought my compass was broken. The back wall, which seems to be the only completed section, is about 14 feet wide and over 5 feet high.

The footprint of the entire structure is about 24 x 16

Besides finding that broken triangle stone, I also noticed another profile in the back wall...



While I was examining what appeared to be a partially collapsed section of the south wall, I kind of noticed that it looks like they had been purposely placed where they were to maybe conceal something like a hidden entrance to another chamber or burial vault...



I have to go back out with some long metal probes and poke around the rocks the next time I go out there but I'm really starting to think that this chamber was only half unfinished... and could of possibly had at least 4 burial vaults inside of it if it had been completed though I have never seen anything remotely similar to something like that... It's possible that we just haven't stumbled on one yet..

The one thing that has really got me suspicious that there might be at least two concealed vaults is the way the ground to the south of the structure is mounded... It's really very close to what the backs of some of the chambers look like...



There is also a row of stones on the very edge of the mound that almost reminds me of a chamber site in upper Connecticut..



I poked around with a sharp stick and was hitting flat stones about two feet out from the outer edge of the south wall so there could be at least one vault there but I wont know for sure until I can probe around those stones...

[DarmonVing]

I went back to the site today with three steel rods that were three feet long with different diameters to probe around the south wall section with and also to probe the mounded area with to see if I could detect any hidden burial vaults... After about two hours I've come to the conclusion that there's probably nothing hidden there but I jusst might dig a test hole in one spot where there could be a buried entrance...

The suspicious looking stones in the south wall turned out to be the beginning of two rows of stone that would have been part of the back wall of the inner chamber... Since we have never, to my knowledge, ever found a chamber under construction before, it confirms our suspicions of there being hidden vaults inside of some of the Hudson/Putnam Valley chambers.

I was gonna sit on this site for a few more days but I think that it's about time that I inform... ... NEARA about what I've found and let them know that I'm back in the field and see how long it takes them to come down to take a look at it.

[DavidCampbell]

The Sandy Creek sites in Oklahoma are full of pink granite; very old weathered pink granite. There is a fault line filled with milky quartz that divides two formations, one limestone and the other extremely old pink granite that dates back to Pangea, according to the geological articles I've seen on it. The Arbuckles, one of the oldest ranges in North America is part of this.
_________________
David Campbell
"The going's getting weird, so I'm turning pro."

[DarmonVing]

These people definitely had a thing for pink granite... The bigger the chunk was, the more they played with it...

[DarmonVing]

I decided to contact one of my colleagues to get his opinion of the site before I get involved with NEARA... I sent him a few images of it and he did ask me a question about the wall structure but nothing else yet... I've been studying these people for a long time and I can tell when something was built by them but I guess that he just ain't so sure about my findings. I'll wait until I after I go back to the site tomorrow and uncover a section of the floor to see what it's made of before I contact NEARA's NY and CT directors...

The West wall is just so similar to the one that I found that stone profile in... and there's this unusual glitch that used to happen to our cameras in the chambers once in a while and it kind of looks like it happened in this image of it...

[DarmonVing]

I went back to the site yesterday and determined that the floor of the vault section is composed of solid rock like the majority of the chambers in the Hudson/Putnam Valley. The floor itself is buried under 14 to 18 inches of debris... I dug a test hole near the back wall and hit solid rock at a depth of 11 inches which is a really good sign... Good enough for my colleague to admit that I may have found a chamber but is under the impression that it was probably built circa 500 AD by Christian Monks.

The email exchange has been quite interesting to say the least...

Here's just a few random quotes from this chess game we seem to be playing now...

[DavidCampbell]

DarmonVing, I don't think there's any need to wait for NEARA. Go ahead and mark off a one meter square within the chamber and remove the layers in one inch increments noting the depth of each suspected artifact before removing. Photograph it in situ and pedestal it if it appears really signifcant. Screen the material with at least a one inch mesh as you procede. I'm certain you can do as well as the NEARA folks if you carefully document what you are doing. Frank can probably give you a few more pointers. If the culture is only suspected to be 500 AD I don't think you will have to go all that far to turn up something. Good luck to you on this.
_________________
David Campbell
"The going's getting weird, so I'm turning pro."

[frank harrist]

Thanks for including me, David, and for the confidence that I know what to do.
I'd use 1/4" mesh to screen the dirt and go by 10 cm.levels/increments.Record everything you find on every level. Make your unit 1 meter by 1 meter. Draw a plan of each artifact in situ. Align your test unit with the cardinal points, (North, south, east, west) and get a fixed point of reference, one which will not be moved. (ie. unit is exactly 90 degrees west of such and such fixed stone so many meters..etc.) Be sure to note and draw in any color differences of soil in the unit as they could be features. Take extensive notes. Collect artifacts and place them in labeled bags with date, level, location in unit, and your name on them. Any other info you think might be pertinant can be written on the bags too. Keep any charcoal you find in the same manner. It can be dated. If it's close to the surface (the charcoal) it could be from a natural forest fire so may not be as important, but keep it and label it anyway. Assign the test unit with a name or number so when you do this again you won't get them confused. Put this name/number on the artifact bags too. things, but just in case you don't I wanted to cover all the bases. Just remember you can never have too much information. The tiniest thing could be very important. Go slow with your digging so you don't miss any features. I personally like to leave any human remains in situ, out of respect. Other than that all I can say is be as thourough as you can. Oh and look at the profiles of the walls. you may find layers that are helpfull. Take lots of pics too. Good luck! Keep us posted. Anytime I can help just let me know. I can't come up there, but I can certainly advise you from here.
_________________
We have not inherited the earth from our fathers. We are borrowing it from our children. (Amish Farmer)

[DarmonVing]

Thanks for the help David and Frank...

I'm being careful not to disturb too much yet. Right now I'm in the process of mapping out the chamber floor and probing it with metal rods to plot the locations of stones from one of the collapsed wall sections that are buried beneath the debris...

This is a very rare site and one that might prove to be one of the only examples of a blended techonlogy between either two different stone carving cultures or two very different sects of the same culture... I'm working on the hypothesis that there were two groups of people that lived in the same place at the same time... One group built what we call corbelled or bee-hive stone chambers that are found all over New England and the other group built straight walled structures like the wall that the small quartz stone profile was found in.

I'm not sure exactly what happened but there seemed to have been a major blow-up between the two groups when one group decided that they were going to build a non-corbelled chamber... And this is what this structure seems to be. It has most of the characteristics of a Chamber but it just doesn't have corbelled walls.

I examined what would have been the north wall of the Chamber and it appears that it had been partially torn down and not collapsed naturally because some of the blocks were found in the middle of the floor.

This is what the wall looks like now.



What the plan is now is to locate one of the deepest buried stones from the collapsed wall section, carefully uncover it and try to determine how much debris is beneath it... If there's nothing but stone beneath it, that would mean that it was purposely destroyed while the Chamber was under construction...

One reason I'm beginning to suspect that it was purposely destroyed is from some clues that at least one of the builders had left behind...

Clue number one is this little triangle shaped pointing stone that is located near the entrance and points south...



The stone points directly between these two upright stones in a stone row south of the Chamber...



Since I've been studying these people for a long time; the message basically was to go south between the uprights and look for 3 upright stones... I went south and ended up in the small clearing that I had found right before I found the Chamber... On the edge of the clearing were 3 toppled upright stones...

One of the stones was pointing down to the narrow valley below:



Another one a little further down was pointing to something:



The second stone was pointing to a small pile of stones at the base of the ridge where the clearing is located:



There were at least 16 of these stone piles spaced randomly in the valley south of the clearing. I'm not sure if these are actual burials or just piles of stones to mark where a person had died which was the practice of some ancient cultures...

There are over 20 of these markers in the whole valley and one large burial mound.



If the other piles of stones are just markers and not the actual burials, then the bodies might have been cremated or just buried up in the clearing... but it does seem that at least 20 if not more people may have been murdered all because they didn't want to construct a corbelled Chamber.

After I determine when the wall collapsed tomorrow, I'm going to bring my assistant and perhaps two other people up to speed and mark the exact locations of all the stone piles with numbered flags and then probe the clearing to see what might be buried beneath the surface before we do any more work at the Chamber site...

I also want to probe the burial mound to see if there are any artifacts that might have been left behind that might give me a clue as to when this all happened... But from the construction techniques used not only at the Chamber site but also used to construct that wall where I found that quartz profile as well as those triangle shaped drill holes, I'd say that the Chamber site might be a couple of thousand years old and not circa 500 AD.

I told Phil, my colleague, about my hypothesis and so far he hasn't shot it down yet... He's had over 20 years experience investigating and researching the Hudson/Putnam Valley Chambers and even wrote two books on the subject so I not only let him know that I was back out in the field but also decided to keep him informed on my progress at the site.

Hopefully I'll be able to get one step closer to proving my hypothesis when I go back to the Chamber and dig up one of those buried stones in about 10 hours.

[DarmonVing]

I was a little late getting to the site today but mission accomplished... Instead of trying to dig up one of the buried stones; I tackled two of the larger stones that were still partially exposed...

I moved the first stone which is the closest one to my camera tripod and then I dug a test hole beneath the two behind it that my measuring tape is leaning up against.



The large boulder weighed pretty close to 200 pounds but I was able to roll it out of the hole it was in just enough to find out what the ground was like beneath it...



Beneath the stone was a layer of black fine grained dirt less than an inch thick and beneath that was solid stone so it seems that this stone got deposited in the middle of the floor while the Chamber was still under construction and I'm pretty certain that it was one of the wall stones.

After I gently moved the stone back into position, I then decided to dig a test hole beneath a quarried rectangular stone to see what was holding it up and found two stones beneath it with the one on the bottom in contact with the floor so these stones had also apparently been pushed or pulled off the wall while the chamber was under construction...

This is a view of the test hole with the tape in it...



This is another view of the top three stones... These were definitely wall stones and weren't where they were supposed to be so I just had to dig around them a bit to see why they were still exposed.



One of the first things that needs to be done, since there's an oak tree with a 5' 5" circumference right in the middle of the chamber, all the leaves that it's dumped in the chamber every fall for who knows how long, need to be removed before any screening can be done.

Also, I just found out that my landlord's son is a well traveled geologist but that his son's wife is an archaeologist so I might be able to get them to unofficially help me out with a dig at the site or at least give me a few toys to play with.

[DavidCampbell]

That is great news, DarmonVing; there are a few geologists and archaeologists who are willing to give expert opinion as long as their names are not mentioned. It really helps if they are personal friends. John Lindsey's brother is a working geologist who was initially very skeptical of Rockwall's artificiality and he played devil's advocate early on pointing out obvious counter arguments and helping John find similar structures in New Mexico. He gradually softened his opposition but never fully came around. By the time a person gets his ticket punched as a certified geologist, they are so immersed in conventional geological theory that it is hard to buck the system. In fact, it usually spells professional suicide if they do.

Bud Shelton, a geologist who was initially very supportive of Rockwall's artificiality, did a 180 degree turn a couple of years back and completely reversed his earlier opinions. Prior to that he had been obliquely labeled a "rogue geologist" by at least one colleague in the profession. He had also supported a number of OOPARTS claims which are considered outright lunacy by the geological community. In fact, some of those he supported were shown to be erroneous interpretations if not outright hoaxes. His last articles which I read in Ancient American were outright debunking pieces, though on the London Hammer, I concur with his assessment that it is a modern artifact encased in limestone mortar which has commonly been made in Central Texas for at least a couple of past centuries.

The archaelogist should corroborate any positive statements made by the geologist and that's a big plus because you have interdisciplinary cross referencing in one package.
_________________
David Campbell
"The going's getting weird, so I'm turning pro."

[DarmonVing]

I went back to the site today and dug around the entrance and found that the solid stone floor was buried beneath 26 inches of dirt and loose stones so it seems that the whole structure has a solid stone foundation which would put it in the same category as a Stone Chamber even though it doesn't have corbelled walls. It's definitely a unique structure and hopefully I'll get enough manpower to at least get the debris out of the burial vault so I can get a good look at the floor... I'm not really sure whether they used slabs or just chisled it out of the bedrock but it's definitely solid... I don't think I should run into any problems with it because I'm only playing around with some old colonial foundation as far as the State's concerned. Or an old sheep pen as the State archaeologist would probably try to classify it as.

[DavidCampbell]

DarmonVing, you have hit upon the great secret of the anomaly crowd. As long as the State considers what you are poking around a natural formation or a common historical feature they won't hassle you. Luckily for you there's no Roman Fort at the top or Medieval village nearby.
_________________
David Campbell
"The going's getting weird, so I'm turning pro."

[DarmonVing]

I learned that secret from a few of my colleagues.

I did a little looking around at the site today after I packed in some extra water and noticed that a section of a stone row directly West of the site was collapsed.



I got right in the middle of the gap and it was right in line with that mound burial that I had thought got disturbed...



It appears that I was mistaken about it having been disturbed. As I took a really close look at the hole, it appears that's exactly the way that they had constructed it. The stones are interlocked and socketed into place around the hole.



What seems to have happened is that the... ... leader (or prick as I call him), was supposed to have eventually been buried in the Chamber... I think that when he discovered that they weren't building a corbelled Chamber, about 20 of the builders ended up dead... And when the... ... leader died, as payback for what he did, he was basically buried beneath a pile of rocks in the very same valley that the builders had died in...

Since the mound has the dimensions of 20 X 16 with an "opening" in the East end of it I would say that they sort of gave him what he wanted.

Yeah it's sort of corbelled and yeah there's an opening in the East side of it, but it ain't no Chamber...

The mound is located in the valley so the sun will never illuminate the opening during a Solstice or Equinox Sunrise... And he's basically all alone there, buried beneath a mound of rocks in a mockery of a corbelled Chamber when he could have been buried in the vault of what would have been perhaps one of the only non-corbelled Chambers in New England...

The builders buried their dead in mounds and the corbelled people mostly cremated their dead except for their leaders which do seem to have been buried in the Chambers... Well almost all their leaders were buried in Chambers.