Location: 105 Haverhill Rd Salem, NH Map
Area: 30 acres
Tel. 1 (603) 893-8300
Open: 9am- 5pm daily (last admission 4pm)
America's Stonehenge is an archaeological site of large boulders and stone structures spread over an area of about 120 m² in the city of Salem in the state of New Hampshire in the northeastern United States.
The history of Mysterious Hill began with Jonathan Patty, a peasant who
lived on these lands from 1826 to 1848. There are various versions as to
who this Patti was. Among others, there is even an assumption that he
was involved in the illegal production of alcoholic beverages on these
lands. But the version that he was an abolitionist along with his son
Seth seems more plausible. They operated a station on the Underground
Railroad, created to help runaway slaves from the South. Evidence of
this is the shackles discovered on the hill, which are now in the
American Stonehenge museum.
Over the next 50 years, quarry
developers bought up and moved most of the structures of the Mysterious
Hill. Presumably, a significant part of the stones was sent to the city
of Lawrence (Massachusetts) for the construction of a dam and for paving
streets. In 1937, an insurance agent, William Goodwin, bought the land
on which Mystery Hill was located and, obsessed with the idea that Irish
monks once lived here, significantly altered the appearance of Mystery
Hill to strengthen the case for his theory. Thus, currently studying the
history of this place is complicated. In 1950, Mysterious Hill was
leased to Robert Stone, who bought the land in 1956 and began
restoration work. He explored the area, took measures to preserve the
Mysterious Hill, and in 1958 built an open-air museum here.
Today, the American Stonehenge, as it is now called, is an attractive
place for tourists. Initially, the monument was named Mystery Hill
(English: Mystery Hill, lit. "Hill of mysteries"). This term remained
the official name of the monument until 1982. On the other hand, back in
the 1960s, an alternative term "American Stonehenge" appeared in one of
the articles, which over time replaced the first one.
One of the most surprising features of Mysterious Hill
is the size of its structures. Resting on four stone legs, the 4.5-ton
flat slab of stone, approximately 9 feet long and 6 feet wide, resembles
a huge table with a groove hollowed out around the edge, leading some
researchers to call the structure a "stone altar." According to an
advanced theory, very popular in the modern world, the groove around the
stone allowed the victim's blood to flow into the bowl. However, the
altar is similar to another structure - a stone ashtray from a farm
museum in the western part of the state of Massachusetts. It is not
associated with sinister sacrificial rituals and was used to make soap.
Such structures are quite often found in the colonial fields of New
England.
Another feature of the complex of ancient buildings of
the Mysterious Hill can be called a large number of stones with images.
Until recently, they were studied by Dr. Barry Fell, a professor of
biology at Harvard University. He did a huge job of deciphering the
inscriptions on the stones found on the mysterious hill and in many
other places in North America. Dr. Berry Fell argued that these texts
were written in Phoenician and Old Irish script. The inscriptions, the
arrangement of the stones according to the position of the celestial
bodies and the megalithic type of the building led researchers to the
conclusion that the Mysterious Hill was a ceremonial site of prehistoric
settlers from Europe. They assumed that Phoenicia was connected with the
American continent, a civilization with developed shipping that reached
its peak in the 12th-8th centuries BC. (Today these are the lands of
Syria and Lebanon). According to this theory, Phoenician sailors, having
first visited America at least two and a half thousand years ago,
conducted trade with the Celts, who at that time already lived on the
Mysterious Hill.
However, more credibility is suggested that
these are relatively recent "inscriptions": traces left by a plow, the
result of stone extraction by local farmers, or maybe natural scratches
- that is, just cracks and crevices, which are often found on rocks.
Fell's claims require careful verification, which means that
archaeologists and epigraphic specialists have a subject for new
research. Unfortunately, some of the stones of the Mysterious Hill were
moved from place to place, that is, they were removed from their
historical environment, so the issue of linguistic analysis of the
inscriptions and their dating is complicated.
It should be noted
that the "American Stonehenge" is often referred to in the press as
another monument of modern origin - the Tablets of Georgia.
Radiocarbon analysis of charcoal deposits dates the buildings to the
period from 2000 to 173 BC., that is, to one of the local Indian
cultures of the archaic period or the early Woodland period.
Access to the monument for visitors is paid. The monument is located in
a park area, where there are also snowshoe tracks and an alpaca farm.
The monument is a popular tourist attraction, especially among followers
of the New Age religious trend.
For the professor of archeology Curtis Russels, the
theory that America's Stonehenge was erected by the Celts is not
credible: the site did not yield any object from the Bronze Age (in fact
no European object from this period has been found in the Americas).
America's Stonehenge is one of the hundreds of areas with curious stone
arrangements and underground redoubts (chambers, tunnels) found in New
England: thus in Upton (Massachusetts), in Groton (Connecticut), in
Petersham (Massachusetts), Goshem, Concord and Bridgewater near Boston
(Massachusetts). While it had always been thought that these were tuber
vaults from the time of colonization, certain archaeologists at the end
of the 19th century began to see in them the work of European settlers
between the 2nd and 1st millennia BC.
Inscriptions or petroglyphs
found on rocks like Bourne Rock on Cape Cod and Dighton Rock in Dighton,
Massachusetts have been attributed to pre-Columbian settlers, which is
denied by American archaeologists, for whom there are no inscriptions
from the Old World in North America, at least before the arrival of the
ancient Norse in Newfoundland around the year one thousand of our era.
Carbon-14 dating of the coal pits discovered on site gives a date
between 173 and 2000 BC.
Objects found at the site lead
archaeologists to conclude that the stones were assembled by local
farmers in the 18th and 19th centuries.