Lauryn French, Kyle Kauwika Harris, Sariah Pemberton & Debbie Eckiwaudah
pose in front of a local watershed maps exhibit at Nurture Nature Center in Easton.
Observant visitors to America's northeastern forests have long encountered various stone structures. These include rock piles, stone chambers, unusual stone walls and circles, propped boulders, standing stones, petroglyphs, and stone or earthen mounds. NEARA was founded in 1964 to promote research into the origins and functions of these structures and sites, to document them and encourage their protection and preservation. Volunteers participate in the search for new sites and enjoy the challenge of better understanding them through the lenses of history, archaeology, anthropology and geology, as well as fields such as archaeoastronomy, deed research, and epigraphy.
Our semiannual meetings provide an opportunity for sharing research on a wide array of subjects, from the early peopling of the Americas, diffusion of cultural features across oceans in antiquity, Native American traditions, to the colonial period. Mythology, astronomy, comparative religion, agricultural practices, landscape studies and remote sensing are all areas we have explored. Our meetings and publications offer a forum for studying these diverse subjects, in an effort to better understand our region and its global context.
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For the first time our conference will be held in Pennsylvania, at the Best Western Inn at Hunt's Landing in Matamoras PA, from 28 to 30 April 2023. Matamoras is just across the Delaware River from Port Jervis NY, so it's not as far away as you might think.
Three field trips are scheduled for Friday:
Remember to register with each field trip leader before going on any field trip.
The Friday evening presentations are scheduled to include:
The Saturday presentations are scheduled to include:
The Saturday evening keynote speaker will be Glenn Kreisberg,
Two field trips are scheduled for Sunday:
Remember to register with each field trip leader before going on any field trip.
The full program: NEARA 2023 Spring Conference Program
To register: Register for the conference
Advance ticket sales only -- you must register before April 18th.
Telephone: 1-570-491-2400
Don't delay -- the cut-off date for discounted room rates is April 1st.
Remember to mention the NEARA room block, which starts Thursday April 27th if you want to be in the area before field trips start on Friday.
The Hotel Full Breakfast is included with the room price.
By Jim Wilson
NEARA helped sponsor four community events in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley in mid-March: at the Lehigh Valley Watershed Conference in Bethlehem PA, and the Nature Nurture Center in Easton PA. In addition to NEARA's $1500 sponsorship, NEARA volunteers from PA, NJ, CT and RI helped plan and deliver these public programs and engaged with the many folks who stopped by NEARA's sponsorship table at each of the two venues where the four events were held on March 11-14. In total, about 300 people attended these four events and had access to NEARA's sponsorship table at all of them. Dozens of email addresses were collected and lots of NEARA literature were freely taken, including our spring conference registration materials.
NEARA's sponsorship helped pay expenses for speakers to attend the events and address constructed cultural landscapes, the use of archaeology for land conservation with Indigenous tribes, and present a film screening and roundtable discussion about the award winning documentary, "The Water Gap: Return to the Homeland". The film screening and roundtable was led by the Choctaw filmmaker and three young Delaware women, who were teenagers when the film was made in 2016.
The land conservation talk and the cultural landscapes program were presented by Dr. Julia King, Anthropology Chair, St. Mary's College of Maryland.
Jim Wilson presented two illustrated programs on constructed stone landscapes during these events, which were sponsored as in-kind contributions by Jim's employer, Northampton County Parks and Recreation.
Jim Wilson contributed an article to the Pennsylvania SHPO's annual report on archaeological site reporting activities. The article starts on page 14. Other interesting articles are in the document, too.
Pennsylvania Archaeological Site Survey 2022This issue of NEARA's journal includes these articles:
NEARA members can receive the latest NEARA Journals and NEARA Transit newsletters electronically or in printed form.
The fall conference was held in Brattleboro Vermont at the Latchis Theater from November 4th to November 6th. View the videos and see the photos at: the Fall 2022 Conference.
This issue of NEARA's newsletter includes these articles:
If you are a member on our email list, you have already received a copy of this issue by email.
NEARA members can receive the latest NEARA Journals and NEARA Transit newsletters electronically or in printed form.
We are in the midst of hosting the contents of Larry Harrop's old web site showing examples of different kinds of stone structures. You can see what we have so far at: Ceremonial Stone Landscapes.
Norman Muller has graciously agreed to let NEARA host all of his articles. You can read them all here.
The spring conference occurred from April 29th to May 1st at Camp Wightman in North Stonington Connecticut. View the videos and see the photos at: the Spring 2022 Conference.
We visited Dr. Frouin's newly-opened laboratory in August 2021. Walter van Roggen wrote this trip report.
Peter Anick made a July 2021 visit to a dig site on Cole's Hill in Plymouth MA: Digging for Vestiges of Old Plymouth
A 3D model of the surface, produced by a laser scan in 2015, is now viewable at Dighton Rock 3D Scans.
The NEARA Fall 2021 Conference had 8 presentations via Zoom on Saturday 6 November 2021 and 7 field trips in the real world the next day. Details are at the Fall 2021 Conference.
Read more about NEARA Conferences.
NEW: we have added a page that describes our BOOK and MAGAZINE and MAP SALE.
We are pleased to announce that we are entertaining visitors again to the NEARA Library and Archives in Nashua NH.
But you can still visit us online. Our online catalog is at NEARA Library. To borrow a book or video you must be a current member of NEARA.
With the move of the Library to its new location, we have been finding a lot of duplicate books that the Library cannot really afford to keep any more. See the complete list at NEARA Library books for sale. Note: this list is changing, so you may want to come back every week. You do not need to be a member of NEARA to purchase books.
If you are a member of NEARA, you can see photos and some archived documents and photos at SiteDB.org. See how sites and people(!) looked like back in the 1960's - 1980's. Also, as a member of NEARA, you can read all of the Journals and Transits that NEARA has ever published.
Read more about the NEARA Library and Archives.
The Research Committee and the New Hampshire State Archaeologist are conducting excavations at sites in New Hampshire. The sites in Hillsborough and Deerfield each have a variety of interesting stone structures. We have performed both sedimentary OSL dating and rock surface OSL dating at these sites. Some laboratory analysis will happen soon, but results may depend on waiting a year to get better dosimeter readings from where the samples were taken in the ground.
There is an article about the research in the April 2021 Transit.
Tom Elmore shares his video about NEARA's project to make a 3D LiDAR scan of Newport Tower.
We had a wonderful webinar on using relatively new technologies together for recording, preserving, and exploring sites:
The webinar happened on Friday 19 March 2021, but you can watch the recorded session at: Triad of Technologies video.
Jim Wilson made a great presentation to the Watershed Coalition of the Lehigh Valley. You can view it on Facebook at: The Mysteries of Constructed Stone Landscapes.
Jim Wilson adds: "I would like to correct an error in my presentation. It was local avocational archeologist Ed Henning who was the champion of, and deserves the credit for the recording of the Pocono Creek Watershed CSL in Monroe County with the PA State Historic Preservation Office. I mistakenly cited Ed Lenik in my talk. My apologies to Mr. Henning for that misattribution."
Hannah Harvey of the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office blogged about Finding Meaning in Stone.
Want to contribute photos for our Gallery? Send us a few really good photos that you have taken. Email them to sites@neara.org. Please include a short caption, including the county and state in which you took the photo, the date you took the photo, and the name you would like to include in the caption.
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Please help us fund our research projects and preservation efforts and library and archives at: Donate.