The Wild Side of North American Prehistory

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Fantastic Archaeology

The Wild Side of North American Prehistory

By. Stephen Williams

Anthropology 100: Dr. Herb Mashner

        The American public’s interest in the fantastic secrets locked away in the new found North American was at it height in the early 1800s.  There were many people wiling to step up and fill the public’s taste of adventure and mystery buried in their neighboring hills.  The people couldn’t get enough of the fantastic.  These were the days of the traveling freak shows and snake oil salesmen.  This national atmosphere was conducive to accepting almost any purported archaeological discovery, no matter how absurd.

The American public and some enthusiastic members of the archaeological field have been too anxious to accept the fantastic findings as truth.  Many times they blindly accept these revelations even in the face of obvious debunking.   During the Pre-Civil War era there was a considerable interest toward the remarkable findings, providing glimpses into this nations history.  

“‘Humbug’ consists in putting on glittering appearances … by which to suddenly arrest public attention.” P.T. Barnum

P.T. Barnum was one of the most recognizable hoaxers.  He is considered a master in the art of “Humbuggery.”   His exploits took him around the country displaying his “discoveries.”  In one of Barnum’s sideshows he produced an elderly black women (Joice Heth) who claimed to have been George Washington’s nurse.  This purported her to be over one hundred-sixty years old.  Later it was discovered that she was no older than seventy years old.  

Although it was commonly know that Barnum was defrauding the public he still meet with success.  Barnum later (1865) wrote a revealing book into the ways of his deception.  A commentator said, “He never befouled the public to its injury.”

The lack of professional archaeologists at the time added the ability for hoaxes to sweep the nation with out any significant challenge.  There were only a handful of notable professionals perusing true archaeology, namely: Atwater, Squirer, and Davis.  These men were all self taught.  There also were a few geologists and linguists studying Greek, Latin and Sanskrit.  Archaeology was open to anyone with sufficient desire.  

There are several cases in which the public was defrauded by a hoax.  One in particular was the Grave Creek Stone.  The story is set in the Ohio valley.  There are many mounds scattered though out the area. In 1775 Nicholas Creswell saw a mound he said to be over one hundred feet high with ditches around the base. In 1805 Meriwether Lewis said a tree on the mound was at least three hundred years old.  In 1820 Atwater estimated this significant mound to be only ninety feet high.  In actuality it is only seventy feet in height.  

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The Tomlinson family owned this significant mound.  In 1819 there was brief investigations into “this lofty and venerable tumulus … contain many thousands of human skeletons.”  Joseph Tomlinson was praised for his preservation of this landscape relic.  

Later Abelard Tomlinson thought the tremendous mound needed more excavation with the intentions of public viewing.  They dug a shaft thought the center of the mound, and a drift from the ground level.  They didn’t strike the multitude of skeletal remains as anticipated.  They did find a timber lined vault covered with rocks.  This vault contained two skeletons, shell beads, and a ...

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