"Nothing but Wood and Stones": A Long-View Perspective on Human-Stone Relations in the Native Northeast

Summary

In 1762 Ezra Stiles—ethnohistoric observer and future president of Yale University—puzzled over the significance of brush and stone heaps constructed by indigenous people of New England. He found the label “sacrifice rocks” unfit for such features because indigenous people never killed animals or offered lives of any kind there. I begin this paper by addressing some of the challenges involved in interpreting eighteenth- and nineteenth-century indigenous spirituality and religion. I contextualize archaeological patterns from households, cemeteries, and landscapes in terms of their long-term histories, beginning with deeper eras of prehistory. I focus on the complicated relationship between humans and stones, tracing its development through time. I consider the ways in which ancient bodily practices and engagements with stone relate to the archaeological patterns we find in colonial contexts, suggesting that perhaps wood and stone were more person-like (even in Christian Indian worlds) than Ezra Stiles ever considered.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Mediating Spirit Worlds in Native North America

Keywords

Spatial Coverage