Book cover of The Place of Stone: Dighton Rock and the Erasure of America's Indigenous Past

Book description

Claimed by many to be the most frequently documented artifact in American archeology, Dighton Rock is a forty-ton boulder covered in petroglyphs in southern Massachusetts. First noted by New England colonists in 1680, the rock's markings have been debated endlessly by scholars and everyday people alike on both sides of…

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1 author picked The Place of Stone as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Dighton Rock in Massachusetts is covered in incised images, some in geometric patterns, others in the shape of animals, and others still depicting human-like figures. It’s fascinating and, like many before me, when I saw it I wondered about the meaning and origin of that rock writing. As soon as European settlers encountered the artifact in the seventeenth century, they vigorously contested its origins. Some claimed the highly eroded markings reflected an assortment of Old World languages including Phoenician and Norse. Others asserted that its message recorded the presence of Portuguese explorers in the early 1500s. Author Douglas Hunter shines…

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