Obviously we can only guess. After years of research and borrowing the ideas of Arthur C. Parker the first New York State Archeologist who was a Seneca and lived on this hill, and the ideas of David D. Robinson a wise person who shared my fascination with this mystery I will propose a theory.
Long before the Seneca a people that have been called the Owasco lived on the hills around the Naples area. The Owasco were associated with the Adena culture that survived in the Northeast for around a thousand years. I believe the Adena people are the people that practiced stone monument construction all over the eastern parts of America from Georgia to Maine. They are more famous for the earthen mound structures they created in Ohio and W. Virgina but I believe they also left behind thousands of stone cairns throughout the Eastern United States. The Owasco were just the local sub set of the Adena culture.
The Owasco lived in the valley around Naples. They had a council bowl in Clark Gulley and a fort on the top of the hill across the valley. They built stone monuments on the hills that rise above the Naples valley. Some where probably ceremonial, some were trail markers, and some were burial cairns.
If my theory is correct these stone monuments are cultural artifacts that have survived the modern era. Although they are not as big as the Pyramids of Giza or the as sophisticated as Petra or as grand as Teotihuacan they represent the same thing. A clue to who we were.
3 comments:
I find your comment that the stone mounds or cairns in your area might date from the Adena period, since the same association was made for the stone cairns at the Oley Hills site in Pennsylvania. That comment never made much of an impact with me, since I always associated the Adena with earthen mounds. A tentative date of c. 1200 B.P. was given for the Oley Hills site, which would place it in the Woodland or Mississippian Period, and this resonates more strongly with me, since there is a Mississippian earthen mound in western MA near the Housatonic River (I've seen it up close). Also, there was until the mid-1840s a Hopewellian stone "fort" in central NH, so possibilities do exist for something like the Adena influencing stone construction
Thanks for the input. Having met you and having read what you have written on this subject I have a great deal of respect for your opinion. I will spend some time researching the possiblity that the Adena did not create stone cairns and post my thoughts.
Don Dragoo, an archaeologist/anthropologist with the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburg, wrote a long article ("Mounds for the Dead...") about Adena influences in the East in 1963. Apparently their influence was felt as far east as Delaware and Maryland. Also, the Glenford (OH) stone "fort," which is located on a hilltop, was dated to 2220 B.P, which places it in the late Adena-early Hopewell period --all of which implies that the Adena probably did work with stone.
Norman
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