{"id":627,"date":"2006-03-03T20:36:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-03T20:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=627"},"modified":"2006-03-03T20:36:00","modified_gmt":"2006-03-03T20:36:00","slug":"627","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=627","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

From Vinland to “Celtic America” (Part 4)<\/p>\n

Part 1<\/a>, Part 2<\/a>, Part 3<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Reading of Richard Nielsen’s championing of the Kensington Runestone, I was reminded of another independent scholar of marginal archaeology–another engineer, coincidentally–the late Bill McGlone of La Junta, Colorado.<\/p>\n

McGlone in turn had been influenced by Barry Fell (1917-1994), a marine biologist and oceanographer. Growing up in New Zealand, Fell had been well aware of the far-sailing Polynesian culture, and he developed a side interest in ancient navigation. He had also learned the Gaelic language while studying at the University of Edinburgh.<\/p>\n

(Here are a Wikipedia entry<\/a> and a detailed obituary with a complete list of Fell’s publications<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

In 1976, Fell published America B.C.<\/em>, an unorthodox survey of North American prehistory, which claimed evidence for visits by ancient Phoenicians, Celts, and others. The evidence was chiefly “epigraphic,” that is to say, based on inscriptions on rocks and caves, etc., here and there. Fell did not even visit all of them, but in his office at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology collected, transcribed, and in some cases translated inscriptions copied for him by various other people.<\/p>\n

Two potential problems arose: sometimes the collectors “improved” the inscriptions, and in other cases, natural features such as cracks in the rock were seen as letters. Still, overall impression of America B.C.<\/em> and Fell’s subsequent two books were intriguing.<\/p>\n

American archaeologists were not impressed. Since it was known that no pre-Columbian culture north of the Valley of Mexico had writing, therefore there could not be any writing, and therefore no one studying ancient writing systems. Epigraphy was for archaeologists working Europe, the Middle East, or Asia. American archaeologists studied artifacts, human physical remains, dwellings, and associated evidence such as pollen and tree rings, but not epigraphy.<\/p>\n

Only artifacts would prove convincing, just as the sparse artifacts found in the mid-1960s at L’Anse aux Meadows had carried more weight than all the sagas in proving that the Norse had visited North America.<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tags: Vinland<\/a>, Celtic America<\/a>, Barry Fell<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Vinland to “Celtic America” (Part 4) Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 Reading of Richard Nielsen’s championing of the Kensington Runestone, I was reminded of another independent scholar of marginal archaeology–another engineer, coincidentally–the late Bill McGlone of La Junta, Colorado. McGlone in turn had been influenced by Barry Fell (1917-1994), a marine biologist and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-627","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":635,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=635","url_meta":{"origin":627,"position":0},"title":"From Vinland to 'Celtic America'\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 19, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"From Vinland to 'Celtic America' - Part 5Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4Barry Fell's America BC and subsequent books revived interest in American epigraphy, the study of inscriptions allegedly left by pre-Columbian explorers andtraders from across the Atlantic, whether Celtic, Phoenecian, or whomever.One of his key collaborators in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":98,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=98","url_meta":{"origin":627,"position":1},"title":"Inventing Jane Harrison","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 15, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I have received Mary Beard's The Invention of Jane Harrison--there goes the evening. (And all hail the interlibrary loan staff for producing it so quickly.) Ronald Hutton writes of Harrison in his book The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft: \"Savagery and barbarism both frightened and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8334,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8334","url_meta":{"origin":627,"position":2},"title":"Jared Diamond Was Wrong\u2014The Greenland Norse Adapted","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A new article in the journal Science refutes Jared Diamond's claim that the 400-year-old Norse colony in Greenland failed because its habitants failed to adapt to the land. Diamond's thesis in his book\u00a0Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed was that the Norse made bad ecological decisions. As one\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Greenland\"","block_context":{"text":"Greenland","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=greenland"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencemag.org\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/inline__699w__no_aspect\/public\/viking_goods.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11257,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11257","url_meta":{"origin":627,"position":3},"title":"Conference on Current Pagan Studies 4: Albrecht Auditorium","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 12, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Part 1: The Southwest Chief Part 2: Holing up in Claremont Part 3: Harper Hall I titled this post because my friend Jeffrey Albaugh, one of the conference organizers, more than once admitted that he just loved saying \"Albrecht Auditorium.\" It's a German given name and surname and also connects\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Jeff-draws-raffle-ticket.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2256,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2256","url_meta":{"origin":627,"position":4},"title":"Hard Times? Not for Hoodoo","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 4, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"People enter hoodoo through the door of suffering, to borrow a phrase from the Umbandistas. The Wall Street Journal reports an uptick in the magic sector: \"Need a Job? Losing your House? Who Says Hoodoo Can't Help?\" In the early 20th century, white pharmacists in black neighborhoods began marketing hoodoo\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Hoodoo\"","block_context":{"text":"Hoodoo","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=hoodoo"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2484,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2484","url_meta":{"origin":627,"position":5},"title":"Old Underground Doings in Tennessee","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"In cave-riddled Tennessee, archaeologists are discovering more and more ancient art, mostly from the High Mississippian culture (roughly coeval with the European Middle Ages) but some much, much older. Just to whet your interest, here are a few paragraphs from John Jeremiah Sullivan's \"America's Ancient Cave Art.\" The imagery was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}