Anarchaeology.com

frank harrist · Joined: 16 Mar 2006 Posts: 107 Location: Northeast Texas

http://cayman.globat.com/~bandstexas.com/preclovisindiansiron.html

Charlie has found what he believes are smelting furnaces. The level at which they were found is much older than any known european activity. He has found many archaic and clovis-like artifacts around the site. The holes may be nothing, but the points he has found are significant. This guy needs some proffesional help in interpreting this site. Look closely at the pics and tell me what you think. I can explain in more detail as needed. I think this could be a very important site. Weird too!

Rokcet Scientist · Guest

Didn't you post that link earlier? I'm sure I saw that website not long ago.

If that site needs professional archaeologic excavation, I would write a research proposal and submit it to as many universities I could.

frank harrist · Joined: 16 Mar 2006 Posts: 107 Location: Northeast Texas

DavidCampbell · Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 12:34 pm Post subject:

Yes, I've seen several sites like those. Back when I first started to get into this sort of thing, I corresponded a bit with William Conner, whose specialty is investigating precolumbian metallurgy sites. His website is here:
http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/
And he began working on such sites with Mallory whose background you can see in the above website. The examples I thought I had found, I'm now convinced were sedimentary iron concretions, but I'm not saying that's what Charlie's are since I only glanced at a couple(that site takes forever to load on my machine). I'll go back later when I have more time to review it more carefully. That background photo looks like a place I once visited near Austin years ago but at the time I was not looking for anything of interest archaeologically. Cabeza de Vaca mentioned huge areas of iron slag in his commentaries and I always assumed he had misidentified natural features but he may have been correct; after all, most Spaniards at that time exploring America were pretty good at identifying valuable mineral resources. Great find, Frank! Thanks for posting it here.
_________________
David Campbell
"The going's getting weird, so I'm turning pro."

frank harrist · Joined: 16 Mar 2006 Posts: 107 Location: Northeast Texas

DavidCampbell · Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 6:09 pm Post subject:

When I went back to Charlie's site, my machine froze up while trying to follow the links. It's image intense to say the least. I did manage to read the response from Chimu at the field archaeology forum at about.com and I think he gave sound advice. If you look at the gallery here called "Outpost at Atoka" you will see a similar feature complete with what looks like rusty residue and a sprue cut into the stone. I'm pretty sure this is a natural feature created by water mingling with sulphur, iron oxides and other minerals in the rock itself. There is also a mortar looking cementation between very regular orthoganal jointing and block features. I learned afterward that this also contained cinnebar which is the ore of mercury. This type of cementation apparently is not unique and i've run into references to it while browsing through various geology sites online. These odd looking formations can be very deceptive when you first start out and I well understand where Charlie's coming from with his site. At the Atoka site I also found some very interesting debitage just below the very structured looking blocks above an overhang. There is no doubt that it was a knapping site and seasonal campsite for thousands of years. Another collector who had visited the site repeatedly had found several paleoindian points below the overhang but it had been "hunted out" by the time I got there. It's not far from a well known paleoindian site called McGhee Creek which Reid Ferring surveyed back in the 80's. The lake which covered much of McGhee Creek has some curious pavements around the dam I was told but i never located them during the quick trip I took to McGhee Creek a few years ago; I got too hung up on the creek itself looking for Clovis campsites(tres verboten at the lake itself). Just about all the weirdness pictured here at this site has ancient artifacts in the near vicinity but I've never been able to make the crucial connection that would prove them related. Guess that's why it's anarchaeology. Mad

_________________
David Campbell
"The going's getting weird, so I'm turning pro."

Charlie Hatchett · Joined: 06 Apr 2006 Posts: 898 Location: Austin, Texas

Hi Guys.

I appreciate the interest in this "oddity".

I've run around on these limestone creekbeds since I was young kid, and

never seen anything like this. There's definitely some weird stuff that

occurs throughout the Balcones escarpment.

Here's five photo's (I promised Frank I wouldn't go "photo

happy"...lol!!):

I like this site. Some pretty cool stuff: iron rings in stone, beveled stone,

apparent walls...

Take care,
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Charlie Hatchett
www.preclovis.com
http://forum.preclovis.com/

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DavidCampbell · Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 1:20 pm Post subject: Triangular hole

Welcome to the forum, Charlie. I'm going to link that first photo to the New England reseachers from the other forum, because they have found several of these triangular holes there. Being where it is, I don't think it can be written off as some colonial farmer with too much time on his hands. That is the best one I've been able to view so far and the one that looks the most artificial. On another site they were discussing these mortar type stone holes found in Utah. They are called "soup holes" up there and I think they probably served the same purpose as the sotol pits in the rocks near Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend. These also appear near Wylie Texas as reported by Stephenson in 1949 when he was doing his excavations on "The Wylie Focus", a Caddoan site, Frank may be familiar with. I could not locate the one in Wylie and it may be under Lake Lavon now. It's just across the East Fork (now mostly Lake Ray Hubbard) from Rockwall. It's one of the very few places where the limestone is exposed at the surface. Supposedly there's an limestone quarry near it that was used in the late 19th century but it's on private property now. That would make for site contamination as far as proving anything near it precolumbian but Stephenson worked for the Smithsonian and the mortars he found were definitely precolumbian. Let me see if these New England folks can help out with additional info from their sites.
_________________
David Campbell
"The going's getting weird, so I'm turning pro."

DavidCampbell · Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 1:47 pm Post subject: Magnetic iron

Charlie, I assume those are magnets you ar holding the iron pieces with? If so that rules out the kind of iron concretions we have up here in Texomaland because the iron content is too low to react to a magnet. On the other hand, some of the meteorite fragments from up here will not react to a magnet either unless heated. See William Conner's site I linked above to get some pointers on how he analyses suspected smelters. Very interesting material you have and definitely worth pursuing further. Have you ever considered the Colonial Spanish angle? There are a couple of books on lost treasures of Texas which have some intriguing stories of a silver mine not far from Austin and a former Texas resident whom I used to communicate with more found arrastres in Central Texas. That's probably not as old as you are looking for, but you'll find all different periods are jumbled together once you start looking into anomalous sites. That's what I ran into in Oklahoma as well.
_________________
David Campbell
"The going's getting weird, so I'm turning pro."

Minimalist · Joined: 23 Mar 2006 Posts: 71 Location: Arizona

That first photo definitely has an "industrial" feel to it. Reminds me of photos I have seen of olive oil presses which were cut into bedrock in the Middle East.

It would be interesting to know where that hole goes.

DavidCampbell · Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 2:25 pm Post subject:

I just activated DarmonVing, the guy I mentioned in regard to the New England Chambers. He should have some comment shortly. Welcome aboard DarmonVing.
Edit to add:
DarmonVing just headed out to his site to get more info and will be along tonight or in the morning. Meanwhile, here's one to compare to Charlie's from DV's site.

_________________
David Campbell
"The going's getting weird, so I'm turning pro."

Charlie Hatchett · Joined: 06 Apr 2006 Posts: 898 Location: Austin, Texas

Charlie Hatchett · Joined: 06 Apr 2006 Posts: 898 Location: Austin, Texas

DavidCampbell · Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 12:16 am Post subject:

Charlie, I'm going to leave the post with the multiple images up for a while until everybody can get a chance to see them but then I'm going to have to prune it. That many large images in a single post is taking an inordinate time to load and causing my computer to lock up. Remember there are those of us out here still on old machines with dialup. I think you you should either use a hot link to your website for photos or limit photos to one per post using only the most relevant one and preferably resize it smaller. I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but I don't know how to pare down the photos without deleting the whole post. Several of your pictures are quite striking in their resemblence to other sites scattered all over the country and I think they should be grouped accordingly but this technical problem has to be resolved in order to make comparisons and navigation here possible. Anybody with suggestions on how to make this work smoother is encouraged to make them. Thanks.
_________________
David Campbell
"The going's getting weird, so I'm turning pro."

Charlie Hatchett · Joined: 06 Apr 2006 Posts: 898 Location: Austin, Texas

Hey David.

I totally understand. That has been my dilemma: I want to properly explain

the furnaces, but I also don't want to scare people off because they know it's

going to freeze up their computers. Should I just post the links to the photos?

I'd love to see any more photos you may have that are similar to these

structures. This is the first time I've come across anyone who somewhat

recognizes these structures. Most just shrug their shoulders or write it off as

a natural oddity.

Thanks David.
_________________
Charlie Hatchett
www.preclovis.com
http://forum.preclovis.com/

"Pregunte la Autoridad"