IN THE EARLY 1950's when I was a child I had noted what appeared to be earthen mound simularities here in Indiana when prepairing from a road map dots marking generalized locations of Indian Mounds, of which some dots seemed to connect in somewhat straight lines although scattered many miles apart.
DURING 1967 while in Southeast Asia I noted what seemed to be a possable alignment situation utalized in the positioning of ancient cities and the alignment conciepts of the engineering at temple sites.
BY 1973 my interest in the phenomena flared after noting similar situations reported in China, also Europe where a searious study had been persued at various times in recorded history. In England it was linked to the ancient designers of the Stonehedge monument and the more ancient circa 3,200 B.C. Newgrange and Knowth sites as well as earthen mounds constructed around the countryside.
BY THE LATE 1970's my research interests had flowed from similar situations in Indiana, Asia, Europe, China, Egypt, Central America, South America and scattered across the U.S. then topped off with pyarmidology and other aspects of ancient engineering worldwide, while continually looking for alignment probibabilities.
IN THE EARLY 1980's my attempts to inquire about such alignment phenemenia at the local University only resulted in Professors assuring me such persuits were frivolous to even entertain for searious consideration in the Northern American Hemisphere, especially in the Indiana vicinity, assuring me that ancient Native American Indians in this region of North America were so primative and intellectually unevolved that they lacked any capability to line anything up between two points as far as a half mile apart, leave alone some 30 miles between the mounds at Anderson and New Castle or the alignment factors I was speaking about existing all over parts of Indiana, into Ohio and into Illinois.
BY THE MID-1980's I was conclusive about my assumptions, having developed several seperate formulas applicable to site locating principals that when all the seperate results were pooled together and analized they provided a valuable hybird situational tool for predetermination of site positioning and hence unknown site discovery. The elaborate angles, mathmatics and geomotery involved are still intriging many years later, especially to consider such capabilities existing to such global proportunes in antiquity without 'modern' resources.
At that point in time I was writing a book about early man in North America, my 'rediscovery' of an ancient North American alignment engineering characteristic, the orderly site placement, and something new ;......a system of measurement and alignment importance at the mounded earth situations themselves,.... and what I had accumulated about the possability of an 'earlier ancestor' apparently alive in several locations in North America long before the ridgid 12,000 B.P. (years before present.) These all appeared as untold truths about the marvelious engineering and cultural evolutionary capabilities of non-European ancient native peoples of North America, who may have had some sort of international knowledge exchange resulting in such projects as some world wide grid mapping and site placement fasination.
One of my side projects was to apply what was already available to me toward mapping of pre-historic population sites ( identified by site number code refering such as documentation of existing referances } and for two groupings of overlay maps including known trail routes, (with other entrys seperatly coded from presumed trail routes) to further promote a multi-time layering aspect of the overall prehistoric culture saturation layering project by applying several time frames to focus upon independantly, from a combined "Indian Highway Map", as I call it, targeting the peroid roughly from 1600 A.D. to 1800 A.D., with the base of the multi-layer project covering everything available to me from the earliest sites circa 9,500 B.C. to the last 'legally occupied' sites ending around 1820 A.D.. The 1820 era being an appropriate point of termination as about all the Native Americans had either left on their own accord due to land agreements or were forced to leave by Army troops converging on their few villages that remained up untill the 1840's,........................( of which a further research starting point is the 1954 edition of the Barnhart multi-volume work "Indiana From Frontier to Industrial Commonwealth", where he devotes an entire chapter to the stages of "Indian Removial" from these Indiana lands we now reside comfortably upon.)
BY 1990 my deterrorating health problems made the field study activity a severe problem if walking very far to a site location, so with the multi-forrmula hybird site locator and identifyer system I then found I could also add into the formula priority acceptance for sites relatively close to vehicle road access, hence my nickname for that concept being "Arm Chair Archaeology" as indeed it inabled me to sit comfortably in an arm chair at home for hours at a time to compute work that would take considerable more man hours, days, weeks, months and years of hit and miss as well as prohibative time and expense to accomplish even scant piecemeal similar results utalizing orthadox means.
Another side project geared for my book incorporated mapping Indian Mound and village sites across Indiana and adjacent states, hopefully to evolve into eventual mapping across the nation state by state into a "Prehistoric community atlas", but to speed the process up I wanted to gain access to all 'recorded' sites and add them to what I had already accumulated to create target sites then establish their alignment factors and parent gridding pattern referance points to prioritize a grid/alignment picture broken down into individual grids then expand outward into adjacent alignment coordinates and grid confirmation aspects of known sites with astrological alignment characterists supporting specifically assigned projection concerns in order to strategicly verify plotting and factors of importance, to include location of key internal grid site eliments necessary to then project dominate regional grid hub sites with close proximity to roadways while also meeting the criteria of the annual 'field plowing season' to restrict the field efforts to. Those sites then became prioritized target sites to inquire about ownership, if a crop to be planted would involve plowing and then any necessary requirements to gain permission to access the target locations to secure 'surface' artifact verification of which would be used as supportive evidence to merit my hybird "Arm Chair Archaeology" process when I presented the site documentation to the State level archives. So to excellerate the mapping activity I needed access to any known sites, ...from eastern Indiana for the initial phase,....elsewhere in Indiana for the state aspects,...... adjacent states for the regional aspect.....and state by state for any hoped for national application, hence to speed placement coordinates to those locations rather than the snails pace going step by step 'there from here' so to speak computing it hours at a time with only the sites I slowly secured by time investments in my hybird "Arm Chair Archaeology" technique. But the Professors I spoke with at the local University and subsciquently at the state University levels and elsewhere in neighboring states and further all assured me that very little was even known about sites in this region and that what was known was access 'restricted' anyway. Trying to explain my intent I also included increasingly more aspects of my site alignment theory, mentioning such aspects as some specific site locations but even those sites were not familiar to who I spoke with and even after the State Regestery was consulted those sites were not even recorded. Again I continued to recieve 'brick solid rejection' of every hint of such alignment engeneering capabilities being worthy of even scant consideration of ancient North American populations,........ that such samplings of sun, moon or star alignments was only limited to the generalized confines of the "more advanced cultures" of Central and South American populations of prehistoric peoples......( which I always considered an insult to my research and to every Native North American and their decendants every time it was mentioned. )
Seeking to bridge the gap between my concepts and their unwavering stance of professional opinions it would first be necessary to have a common point of agreement to start with, so I presented data reguarding the straight line alignments between several target site locations such as the "Mounds State Park" site near Anderson, Indiana, as well as sites such as at Winchester, Windsor, Carlos, Losantsville, South Muncie, Richmond,and elsewhere, as well as refered to still unregestered sites located along the trajectory routes, -- all perfectly aligned, -- including the inter site alignment factors of the earthen mound clusters at the "Mounds State Park" sites and those at the "New Castle Hospital" site but the more facts I presented the more they were tossed back as frivolous.
One nagging problem was the positions of the more distant objects outside our solar system in the sky that we see today, such as stars important to the ancients, as they have moved somewhat in the past 2,000 years in reguards to our observation perspective from the same locations on earth when alignment measurements were made 2,000 years ago and earlier,..... so I purchased a computer generated sky chart program which inabled me to pick any date and time of any day as far as several thousand years B. C. and see the positions of heavenly objects as they would appear from any longitude and latitude coordinates on earth, which solved that problem for me while adding new alignment stradigy to apply to the "Arm Chair Archaeology" technique.
I continued persueing my assured importance of the alignment conciepts and how such could mean that at some distant point in antiquity man was roaming the earth mapping it preciecely......indeed concievably continent by continent .... but as far as the University Professors went, other than being good listeners with an occational question my alignment findings never seemed to be of anythig but polite interest with reassurances they were mere coincidental findings.
I never suspected that possibly I was only being duped as an information source,.... not untill the day my wife came home and handed me the latest daily newspaper edition from the University.
The headlines described the 'discovery' made independantly by the NON-BELIEVING Professor who announced 'HIS' conclusions that the earthworks at "Mounds State Park" astronomy observatorys used to observe astronomy activity, that a possable system of earth surface site alignment links the "Mounds State Park" site and that of the "New Castle Hospital" site etc etc etc.......... which later I was told was followed upon by useing his students as a work force and the University facilities for extensive alignment reserarch concluding with his own book and published report resulting in him to now being recently described to me as "THE authority on alignments done by ancient peoples in Indiana and the Eastern U.S." ........... Hummmmmmmm ???
I am indeed thankful that my efforts to convince someone of the alignment factors existing even here in Indiana were followed up on but I hope too that they can be applied for my intended end objective of inhanced site location for preservation and educational availability supportive of ancient cultural attribute awareness.
As far as my ideas about the engineering capabilities of prehistoric peoples here in North America, I might add that during and since this several year episode and above situation I have been in contact with respectfull Professors and researchers across North America and elsewhere with opinions identical to mine --where I learned the term 'Astroarchaeology and the mainstay Archaeoastronomy'-- whos opinions by the way are today in the mid-1990's not so profoundly radical thanks to a new TV series on Cable TV "Discovery" Channel which devotes itself to such realms of possability,...................and then the iceing on the cake came my way in the December 1995 edition of "Archaeology" magazine where a very interesting story appeared about an astronomicly aligned 'straight line' 60 (SIXTY) mile long ancient road between Chillicothe and Newark, Ohio with a roadway 150 feet wide and evidence of earthen parallel walls as high as four to ten feet high in places, .......... Hummmmm, Gee whiz, a sixty mile long straight roadway, and that sixty mile long straight line aligned to heavenly object activity coordinates, and all that done in prehistoric times ! Kinda makes me wonder if that Professor saw that article ! :-)
Well my book project has been put on the 'back burner' , the "Arm Chair Archaeology" basicly shelved along with all site documentation for now, as indeed the eligant rich flavor it once had has somewhat dimminished while it and further devotion to the site mapping aspects waits it's turn in the 'pecking order of things' with other more dominate health priorities and other challenging hobbies.
Anyway, I found what I was looking for and have the capabilities to apply it anywhere else I care look, so although planning continues I'll feel content for the time being sitting in my arm chair with an occational map.
One project goal is to utilize known data along with the multi-formula "Arm Chair Archaeology" aspects to create a software program inabling a deployable means of hybird generation of extended mapping and verification means afforded such sites here in the eastern U.S. -- to provide a verfication referance foundation secureable of professional level technology absorbtion,--....then hopefully the concept could be linked to recent site analasis technologies to graduate into a global data base utalizing known world-wide archeology site data,......hence to afford those prefered sites with acceptable characteristics to be inserted as referance points to generate mapping of persuit locations of yet unidentified sites within its regional domain,........ all of which could then be expanded for further application to a higher level of global mapping graduation affording insights into actual site utalization importance to further determine such aspects as site utalization and subsiquent artifact classification spectrum expectations for particular geographic and era cultural expectations of such individual sites,.... which could apply to generate site priorities for time limited in-field expedition projects by budget restrictive antiquity preservation hosts,........ who could then pick desired sites for surface, airborne and/or complementary satalite scanning penetration resulting in a means to compact the time investments, hence excellerate the formulation of a global listing completeness threshold in time frames impossable to imagine with more restrictive presently available technology.
I've crossed alot of paths and formulated modified opinions since my above concerns, but then as well as now I refuse to assist anyone who might find greed more profitable than serious preservationist goals. Also a parimount personal concern is that such 'known sites' could be forever erased by 'treasure hunters' out top make a fast buck. Such problems seem evident once such ease in site location trickle-down technology and subsciquent data securement becomes more readily available to any greed driven individuals within the professional civilian community, amateur explorers / collectors level and the ever encrouching black market arena, all of which could further esculate or even greatly perpetuate the age old rape of ancient site activity, which in itself has evolved the hiddious crime of the grave robbing treasure hunters centuries ago and evolutionized it into the respectful professions of Anthropology and Archaeology today. Such profit pilfering only further erases the artifact site evidence necessary to someday document an accurate futuristic big picture of the appreciation of the complexities of ancient cultural groups and populations who once resided on and roamed the lands we now occupy.
During previous generations even at this localized level the callous disregard for even the generally internationally recognized burrial remains of prior regional inhabitants by a later arriving people include but are not limited to the extraction of human skulls and skelletin remains for an apparent decorative ghoul home conversation stimuli or barter object, --as demonstrated by a skull at a Gun Show in recent years described flippantly as, "just some old Indian skull" --.....spanning the spectrum to the lowest levels of absolute annihiilation ignorance as reportidly done in the 1800s near Farmland, Indiana where at least one burrial mound was leveled to incorporate less burdonsom horizontal farming while the remains of their resting bones reportidly became a resource for farm land fertalizer and part of the infrastructure roadbed development in Randolph County Indiana.
Looting of national treasure Moundbuilder monuments has been an American preoccupation since the years immeadiatly after the historical European contacts, who brought with them similar grave robbing practices done in Europe and elsewhere.
Local activity during the late 1800's and early 1900s included such described weekend recreatiion as 'treasure hunting digs' at Native American sites locally, such as the historicly known village sites near White River near Burlington Pike where also nearby the grave of the last Delaware (Lenepe) Indian to die in Delaware County ( "Ingun Jim" Muscows 1873 at age 69) was not even immune anymore than some twenty miles west of that site the circa 160 A.D. eligantly mounded earthen engineering feats where the later developed "Mounds State Park" now protects had become infested with pot hole ruins from weekend seekers of rumored abandoned "Indian treasures".
For several years I and many other like minded site recognition / site preservationist individuals wrote to our Congressmen, Senators, State Representatives and other local elected officials seeking the creation of some form of law to protect ancient sites and I for one was delighted when it was passed although the law is reportidly weak and nearly impossable to enforce.
So in the meantime one example of our national treasures near the small hamlet of Windsor, Indiana has reportidly been transformed from a once eligant earthen mound constructed circa 150 A.D. which now resembles a hill with a gapping cavity, described some years ago as requiring a series of ladders in stair step terraces to reach the bottom of. Another individual described the cavity hole(s) cluttered with tossing asside unwanted damaged pottery artifacts while lootrs searched for sellable undamaged pottery items. Another individual described seeing what appeared to be a farm impliment conveyer belt sunk deep inside the deepest cavity apparently used to remove debris and artifacts. The importance of that particular site for artifact preservation was described to me by a professional Archaeologists at the local University as one of if not the most important Adena / Wooldland Indian pottery sites and Mound design in the north-eastern United States. Further inquiry into the end destination of looted Indian grave artifacts has been described as sale to western state based agents who sell to European, Japanese and Middle East buyers seeking top dollar purchases of authenitic Native American artifacts. All such documentation avoidance of Black Market grave robbed artifacts results in further perpetuating perminatly erasing necessary evidence from future professional assembly affording more complimentary understandings of ancient populations,....... and in the meantime many of us wait for 'more sincerely protective' legislation.
Meanwhile back at the trusted preservation hub of our citizen populations, namely the Universitys, where generations of artifact donations from good hearted preservationist minded citizenry would seem to be brimming their storage coffers,..... yet further inquiry into the matter is ofren recieved with defensive responses and occational confidental comments alleging years of percieved thiefts of artifact treasures by custodians, students and staff......... underlining the absolute importance in establishing a national central archive of regesteration for historical preservation, accountability and detailed description of all artifacts before they and their origin information are lost to preceeding generations where such accumulated data, technology advances in site location principals, cultural aspects, sincere preservationist standards and more satisfactory means of site security could 'then' result in an era when our school systems and professional community could hopefully allow the general public at least an honorable glimpse into the ancient native peoples of North America and their guests who composed intricate interrelated cultural expansions appreciating vast skills and grand scale engineering achievements throughout this Western hemesphere millenniums ago yet who have never been allowed worthy acknowledgement by any of the post-Columbus generations of dominating European immigrants who dictate the origins of 'worthy' North American history since that time, time when the late arriving Central American discovering Christopher Columbus is credited with discovery of an already known land mass here in these Americans.
