Our Hidden Landscapes

Challenging traditional and long-standing understandings, this volume provides an important new lens for interpreting stone structures that had previously been attributed to settler colonialism. Instead, the contributors to this volume argue that these locations are sacred Indigenous sites.
This volume introduces readers to eastern North America’s Indigenous ceremonial stone landscapes (CSLs)—sacred sites whose principal identifying characteristics are built stone structures that cluster within specific physical landscapes. Our Hidden Landscapes presents these often unrecognized sites as significant cultural landscapes in need of protection and preservation.
In this book, Native American authors provide perspectives on the cultural meaning and significance of CSLs and their characteristics, while professional archaeologists and anthropologists provide a variety of approaches for better understanding, protecting, and preserving them. The chapters present overwhelming evidence in the form of oral tradition, historic documentation, ethnographies, and archaeological research that these important sites created and used by Indigenous peoples are deserving of protection.
This work enables archaeologists, historians, conservationists, foresters, and members of the general public to recognize these important ritual sites.
Contributors Nohham Rolf Cachat-Schilling
Robert DeFosses
James Gage
Mary Gage
Doug Harris
Julia A. King
Lucianne Lavin
Johannes (Jannie) H. N. Loubser
Frederick W. Martin
Norman Muller
Charity Moore Norton
Paul A. Robinson
Laurie W. Rush
Scott M. Strickland
Elaine Thomas
Kathleen Patricia Thrane
Matthew Victor Weiss

Our Hidden Landscapes introduces people to eastern North America’s Indigenous ceremonial stone landscapes (CSLs)—sacred sites whose principal identifying characteristics are built stone structures that cluster within specific physical landscapes. This volume presents these often unrecognized sites as significant cultural landscapes in need of protection and preservation. Chapters from Indigenous community members, archaeologists, and anthropologists provide a variety of approaches for better understanding, protecting, and preserving these important sacred spaces.

Lucianne Lavin is an archaeologist, a director emeritus of research and collections at the Institute for American Indian Studies Museum in Connecticut, and the author of Connecticut’s Indigenous Peoples.
Elaine Thomas is a Mohegan tribal member and has worked in the Mohegan Tribal Government for twenty-two years. She works with tribal nations in identifying and preserving ceremonial stone landscapes.

Contents
Foreword by Laurie Weinstein 000
Introduction 000
Lucianne Lavin and Elaine Thomas
 
Part I. Indigenous Perspectives on the Meaning and Significance of Ceremonial Stone Landscapes
1. When the Landscape Speaks for Itself, What Do We Learn? 000
Doug Harris
2. Markings of Ancestral Pathways: A Native Perspective 000
Elaine Thomas
3. Unseen Borders and Ways of Knowing: Northeastern Algonquian Sacred Lands 000
Nohham Rolf Cachat-Schilling
 
Part II. Academic Perspectives on Understanding, Protecting, and Preserving Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscapes
4. Obligations of Place: Engaging with Tribal Historic Preservation Offices in New England to Preserve and Protect Ceremonial Stone Landscapes 000
Paul A. Robinson
5. “So You Believe in Aliens, Too?” An Anthropologist Looks at Stone Features in the North American Northeast and the Archaeologists Who Do and Do Not Study Them 000
Laurie W. Rush
6. Introduction to Stone Removal and Disposal Practices in Agriculture and Farming 000
James E. Gage
7. Ceremonial Landscapes in the Chesapeake 000
Julia A. King and Scott M. Strickland
8. Stones and Their Places: An Application of Landscape Theory to Ceremonial Stone Landscapes of West Virginia 000
Matthew Victor Weiss and Charity Moore Norton
9. Piled Stone Features of Jackson County, Georgia 000
Johannes H. N. Loubser
 
Part III. Case Studies of Ceremonial Stone Landscapes
10. A Sacred Space on a Hilltop in Harwinton, Connecticut 000
Robert DeFosses
11. Interpreting Row-Linked Boulder Sites from Georgia to New England 000
Norman Muller
12. Historic Ceremonial Structures 000
Mary Gage
13. A Theoretical Model of the Moon and the Milky Way at Ancient Meeting Places 000
Frederick W. Martin
14. Mythologies of Light and Cast Shadow Within Northeastern Stone Chambers 000
Kathleen Patricia Thrane
Contributors 000
Index 000
x Contents