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A New Dimension to Ancient Measures - from many years of research and fieldwork

A New Dimension to Ancient Measures - from many years of research and fieldwork

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<< Other Photo Pages >> Spout Run - Not Known (by us) in United States in Mid Atlantic

Submitted by bat400 on Thursday, 10 November 2011  Page Views: 16170

Date UncertainSite Name: Spout Run
Country: United States
NOTE: This site is 42.964 km away from the location you searched for.

Region: Mid Atlantic Type: Not Known (by us)
 Nearest Village: Bluemont, VA
Latitude: 39.101000N  Longitude: 77.873W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
3
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Spout Run
Spout Run submitted by bat400 : One of the Spout Run circles.
Photo was provided by Dr. Jack Hranicky and published in the Clarke Daily News, http://www.clarkedailynews.com/archaeologist-claims-12000-year-old-solstice-site-in-clarke-county/25889. (Vote or comment on this photo)
Proposed Stone Circles in Clarke County, Virginia.
Three proposed stone circles claimed to have been built to create solstice alignments with a nearby natural formations, notably, the Bear's Den Rocks. In general the stones are small enough to be moved directly by one or two people, and appear to have been local stones. Non-local jasper stone debris and a worked fragment of a scraper were found in an excavation below some of the stones.

Archaeologist Jack Hranicky presented his findings from survey and an excavation unit at the 22 Oct 2011 Annual Meeting of the West Virginia Archaeological Society. Hranicky is known for publications on stone tool typology and has claimed finding several astronomical alignment sites. He estimates a date of 10000 years BC for the stone arrangement. However, this date is based on his find of the jasper fragments and their similarity to those from a different site in the Shenandoah valley with a jasper quarry dated in context to 10000 BC.

Mysteriously, the Spout Run stones were discovered by the landowner clearing brush in order to build his own modern "medicine wheel" for a Native American Church. From photographs accompanying news story, the stone circles appear to have been found directly on the ground surface.

Note: Archaeologist Claims 12,000-Year-Old Solstice Site. See comment.
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"Spout Run" | Login/Create an Account | 8 News and Comments
  
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Re: Sprout Run by Anonymous on Saturday, 12 July 2014
Your site would be more credible if you got names right: Spout Run, not Sprout Run; Bear's Den, not Bearden, Rocks.

However, I share the skepticism about this thing, which has surfaced recently in local news.

I stumbled on a photo, purportedly of this site, which looked more "convincing" although from the look of it, it could have been set up by hippies 45 years ago. Now I can't find the damn picture.

Tom Chalkley, Baltimore MD
[ Reply to This ]

Stone circles on Va. property 'predate Stonehenge' by Andy B on Thursday, 29 May 2014
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To get some idea of the site's age, a section of jasper from the Spout Run site was sent to James Feathers, who runs the Luminescence Dating Laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle.

This, said Feathers, is a dating method based on solid-state physics. Materials absorb energy from natural processes and can store that energy for indefinite periods of time. Exposure to heat can release energy.

According to Feathers, the piece of jasper found along Spout Run was heated, perhaps in a campfire, and it's possible to determine by the proportion of luminescence when that occurred.

"The method has been in use for more than 30 years," Feathers explained, "and has been shown to be accurate against independent dating evidence. Precision is usually 10 percent or better."

The date when that piece of jasper was burned on the Blue Ridge, Chris White said, is about 10,470 B.C.

[Which is pretty interesting to date the settlement but doesn't really provide a date for the circles - MegP Ed.]

More in our forum
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=Forum&file=viewtopic&topic=6243&forum=1&start=0
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Clarke County site may be ancient celestial calendar by bat400 on Friday, 11 November 2011
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Excerpts from an article by Val Van Meter in the 3 Nov 2011 Winchester Star. Note the comments from a peer archaeologist.
[unfortunately, the link to the original news item has been broken.]
Rock circles on a spit of mountain land along Spout Run may be the oldest above-ground Paleoindian site in North America, according to Alexandria archaeologist Jack Hranicky. He will deliver an address about the site - which he dates to 10,000 B.C. - to the Society for American Archaeology next April in Memphis, Tenn.

The set of concentric circles drew the attention of landowners Chris and Rene White as they were planning to create a medicine wheel on their 20 acres. As White prepared to put his medicine wheel on the site, he realized that a circle of stones was there - actually, several concentric circles.
Someone suggested that White contact Hranicky, who had studied five other Paleoindian sites in Virginia.

He said he saw the pattern in the rocks as soon as he arrived at the site, noting three concentric circles at the western edge.
To the east, touching this area, is another circle that Hranicky calls the observatory. Here, rocks on the edge of the circle align with features on Blue Ridge Mountain to the east.
From a center rock, over a boundary rock, a line would intersect the feature called Bears Den Rocks on the mountain. Standing on that center rock, looking toward Bears Den, a viewer can see the sun rise on the summer solstice, Hranicky said.
To the right of this rock around the circle, another lines up to Eagle Rock on the Blue Ridge, and with sunrise at the fall equinox, he said.
Yet a third points to a saddle on the mountain where the sun makes its appearance at the winter solstice.

Hranicky, 69, a registered professional archaeologist who taught anthropology at Northern Virginia community College and St. Johns High School College, has been working in the field of archaeology, for 40 years. Hranicky was convinced that it was a Paleoindian site, based on the configuration of the concentric circles, the solstice alignment and the altar he has seen at other such sites. But he wanted an artifact.
His test pit turned up three artifacts. One was a thin blade of quartzite. The second was a small piece of jasper, a type of quartz rock and an important find, Hranicky said. Jasper was prized by Paleoindians for making tools. It was hard and durable, but could still be worked by Stone Age methods. They traveled miles to find sites where jasper nodules protruded from native rock, and quarried the stone to make projectile points and tools.
The third artifact was the most important. It was a tiny piece of jasper, no bigger than the end of a thumb, but this rock had been worked, Hranicky said. It was a tool, a mini-scraper.

Jasper on the site ties what Hranicky believes was a ceremonial observation site to another proven Paleoindian site just to the south of Clarke County in Warren County - the Thunderbird site. William Gardiner of Catholic University excavated that site for several years. Indians camped on the east bank of the South Fork of the Shenandoah River and quarried jasper for tool making from bluffs on the west bank. The Thunderbird site is dated to 10,000 B.C.

Hranicky is applying to have the Whites' stone circles added to Virginia's list of archaeological sites.
"It will be recorded," said state archaeologist Mike Barber.
Barber said several ceremonial observatories across North America are attributed to Paleoindians.
"Jack has recorded several of these types," he said. "The real problem is proving what these things are. We haven't arrived at that level yet."
Barber said he has received a preliminary report on the site from Hranicky, and is trying to schedule a time to visit it.
Is the Clarke County site an ancient solar observatory for early Americans?
Barber is cautious.
"I'm not to the point where I can say tha

Read the rest of this post...
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Re: Archaeologist Claims 12,000-Year-Old Solstice Site in Clarke County by Anonymous on Thursday, 10 November 2011
Wow, Some stretch of the imagination, because of a few Japer tools and some unidentified "artifacts" to give it a date of "12,000 years before the present", Making claims like this is why so many "Orthodox Archaeologists" steer clear of assumptions, and why verifiable sites of extremely ancient dates are so excruciatingly re-examined. Just think how much debris would be on top of such an ancient site, especially in a forest setting, Common sense would dictate extreme peer review, before making any more claims of this site.
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    Re: Archaeologist Claims 12,000-Year-Old Solstice Site in Clarke County by bat400 on Friday, 11 November 2011
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    My own thought is that there is a lot of wishful thinking going on here. The more "things" someone starts identifying as alignment markers, the more likely you'll find some kind of alignment. The date strikes me as being particularly weak.
    I'm going to find out more about the "Thunderbird site" and make a listing for it.
    [ Reply to This ]
    Re: Archaeologist Claims 12,000-Year-Old Solstice Site in Clarke County by Anonymous on Tuesday, 20 December 2022
    I'd be wary of a few things and more about the people promoting this and why. When people claim tribal affiliation it can be very problematic and I would be asking which Cherokee Tribe Chris White is from and to see his credentials to be honest. So many people claim to be Cherokee who are not. As for the "Lumbees" they are not Federally recognized because they do not meet the requirements. Federally recognized tribes are legitimate because they meet the requirements and are seen as a sovereign nation based on actual treaties with the US Government. Always keep in mind that Federally recognized tribes are a Tribal Government to US Federal Government relationship because of the treaties and their status. Here is a letter opposing their Federal recognition by 9 Federally Recognized Tribal leaders: https://www.indianz.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/08/scia030422.pdf https://abc11.com/lumbee-recognition-cherokee-choctaw/8064221/ A word of warning is that pretendianism is everywhere in the US and you honestly need to work with the Federally Recognized tribes to have any legitimacy to claims. Any group outside of that (including State Tribes - which is about money and political gains for state politicians) creates false narratives about the history, stories and sovereignty erases and replaces actual tribal citizens. On another note, this "Native American Church" is connected to Oklevueha Native American Church (ONAC) and has been denounced by the actual Native American Church in the US: https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/oldest-native-american-church-to-james-mooney-marijuana-is-not-our-sacrament The man running this has been proven to be fraudulent in his Native American claims (which has changed over time) and in his genealogy. If they do not have Federal ID cards then they are not connected to an actual tribe. Most of them are 501c3's. If you start looking up ONAC you will see how deeply problematic they are around the country. From deaths to other criminal activities, I feel like this has been posted to promote something that is fraudulent and possibly detrimental to everyone interested. Unless you start researching into any of this kind of thing most people, especially academics, will not know. Those doing the research need to do some due diligence in any of the claims being made. I hope this helps.
    [ Reply to This ]

Archaeologist Claims 12,000-Year-Old Solstice Site in Clarke County by bat400 on Thursday, 10 November 2011
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Bear’s Den Rock has captured the attention of travelers in the northern Shenandoah Valley since colonial times and for thousands of years before. Now, a local archaeologist believes that the prominent outcrop just south of Virginia’s Route 7 in Clarke County is a part of a larger 12,000 year old celestial calendar used by Native Americans to mark the changing of the seasons.

“Although archaeological sites have been discovered across the United States, there’s nothing like this above ground or this old in North America,” says Dr. Jack Hranicky about the site. Hranicky is a Virginia Registered Professional Archaeologist (RPA) who has authored 32 books on North America’s prehistory and discovered at least half-a-dozen other Native American solstice sites.

“As the Paelo-Indians moved north along the river, Bear’s Den Rocks would have been a very prominent landmark for them,” says Dr. Jack. “They also would have been able to clearly see the site where we are standing right now.”

Dr. Jack is standing in the middle of several large, concentric stone rings. The rings were discovered by Clarke County resident Chris White on property he purchased in 2000 located about two miles southwest of Bear’s Den on a lower bench of the Blue Ridge.

For years, White said, he had dreamed of creating a retreat center where all types of people could come to meet and discuss issues that concern Native Americans. White decided to establish a faith-based community outreach-initiative. White decided that a good first step toward implementing his Sanctuary on the Trail vision would be to construct what is known as a “medicine wheel.”
As White began clearing fallen trees and brush from his hoped-for medicine wheel site, something extraordinary began to unfold. As White removed debris, circles of concentric rocks began to be revealed. White decided that a professional archaeologist might be able to give him a better idea of whether the rings had been formed naturally or were man-made.

Like any scientist, Hranicky was skeptical at first, but was none-the-less intrigued by White’s find. After some preliminary investigation Dr. Jack decided that the site deserved additional archaeological investigation. Hranicky conducted the first scientific excavation uncovering a small five by five foot area at the Spout Run Site that so far has produced jasper tools and other supporting artifacts dating back approximately 12,000 years before present.

“Finding jasper tools here is very important,” Hranicky said. “Jasper does not occur naturally in this area so its presence on this site is very important in establishing that Paleo-indians were once here.”

According to White and Hranicky, a person standing in the center of the stone rings is able to focus their line-of-sight with one of several large stone markers placed at precise positions in the ring’s outer-most perimeter. The stone perimeter points can then be aligned with prominent landmarks further from the circle – for example Bear’s Den Rocks nearly two miles away.
Based on the stone alignments, Hranicky says, a viewer standing in the middle of the circle will observe the Sun rise directly over Bear’s Den Rocks on the Summer Solstice.

Hranicky is in the process of registering the site as a state-recognized prehistoric site with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and as a National Historic Landmark with the U.S. Department of Interior.

Hranicky and the Whites have coined the name “Spout Run” for the prehistoric site after Spout Run stream that winds through the property before making its way further down the mountain and into the Shenandoah River. Hranicky will be presenting his research on Oct 22 during the Annual Meeting of the West Virginia Archaeological Society in Charleston, West Virginia.

Thanks to coldrum for this submission. For the full article, go to Read the rest of this post...
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