This post gives an example of the fun that ensues when your Mesoamerican lenses blind you to what would be obvious if you just took them off for a moment.
The Journal of Book of Mormon Studies published an article titled "Looking for Artifacts at New York's Hill Cumorah" in 2005. Here's the abstract:
"Landon Smith gives an account of artifact hunting in the fields surrounding Hill Cumorah, near Palmyra, New York. He presents evidence that the archaeology of New York does not support the idea that Book of Mormon peoples lived in that region or that New York's Hill Cumorah was the scene of the final battles between the Nephites and the Lamanites."
You can read the whole thing here. I'm going to go ahead and copy the entire article here with my notes.
But first, I have to note that BMAF characterized Langdon's account as "The Demise of One 'Mormon Myth' about the Hill Cumorah." See that article here. It's kind of fun that the BMAF article claims Langdon "had not been exposed to the thinking that the 'real' hill Cumorah of the Book of Mormon was located in Mesoamerica," but the editor of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies says Langdon "wrote the letter in response to Dr. Clark's article." Who could read the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies in 2004 and not know about the Mesoamerican theory?
Now read the article with my comments and think about which myth was really involved here.
_______________________
The following account of artifact hunting in the fields surrounding Hill Cumorah, near Palmyra, New York, is from a letter by Langdon Smith of New Haven, Vermont, and addressed to John E. Clark, professor of anthropology at Brigham Young University and director of the BYU New World Archaeological Foundation, based in Chiapas, Mexico. The letter has been slightly edited and is used with the author’s permission. Mr. Smith wrote the letter in response to Dr. Clark’s article “Archaeology and Cumorah Questions” (JBMS 13/1–2, 2004), which presents evidence that the archaeology of New York does not support the idea that Book of Mormon peoples lived in that region or that New York’s Hill Cumorah was the scene of the final battles between the Nephites and the Lamanites. —Ed. [This editorial comment is a lot of fun, as we'll see when I post my comments on Dr. Clark's article in the future.]
On my dairy farm in Vermont in the mid-1950s, while harrowing in the spring, I saw a black, pointed object. It was a black chert “knife.” Wow! I have always been interested in historical things. So I
looked all around, but that was it. Several years ago I found another point. My farm efforts were winding down, so I had more time to look.
Since retiring, I have worked on some state site digs with professionals. By myself I have also found
over 378 new Native American sites, obtaining Vermont State site numbers for all of them. I have made out all the required survey forms and sent the relevant information to the state offices.
At this time, I have close to 5,000 arrowheads with all the other tools—bifaces, preforms, knives,
scrapers, and so on. Altogether I have 17,000 pieces. Each piece has been traced, with the site number
and catalog numbers painted on. Maps are made of each site with X marks locating where each piece
was found. [Well done. It would be interesting to see this map.]
In working with the state, I get to see things that I’m probably not supposed to see—like a New
York State site map. Around Syracuse and the areas in eastern New York State there are many sites
recorded, as there are around and south of Rochester in western New York. But around the Hill
Cumorah area, the closest site numbers are about 60 miles away.
Wherever early American sites are, collectors will find them, plowed fields being the best place
to look. Having been to the Hill Cumorah Pageant at other times, I knew that there were plowed fields
nearby. Since I had the experience of searching and finding sites, my interest in finding sites of possible Nephite/Lamanite arrowheads was high. There were also stories of how Brother Willard Bean found arrowheads by the basketful around the hill and sold them to tourists. If battles took place at the hill, and a lot of people took part—everything sounds about right—the area should be covered with all kinds of artifacts. [It would have been covered in 400 AD. 1600 years later, is that still a reasonable expectation?]
I have made the seven-hour drive twice in the past few years. Both times I traveled to Palmyra
during the early planting season—fields just plowed and harrowed, following a good rain to wash the
dirt off any artifacts.
There are some areas that are not plowed and cannot easily be hunted, including the seating area west of the hill and the car parking area on the west side of the highway. North of the hill there is a gully
going west to east with trees growing along it, circling from west of the road past the north end of the
hill to the east side. Along the whole east side of the hill is a large plowed field. To the north of the gully with trees is the farm that is owned by the Clark family. They have several plowed fields in the area.
Arriving at Cumorah, I have asked workers on the grounds around the visitors’ center and people
inside the center about arrowheads. Their comments were: “Oh yes, people find them around here all the time.” I would ask, “Have you found any yourself?” “Well, no.” “Do you know anyone who has found some?” “No.” “Have you seen any actual pieces found by others?” “No.” [It would be unusual for people working inside the center to find arrowheads, just as it would be for those working on the long-landscaped grounds. A good interview would have asked about the discrepancy between the statements.]
I have walked to the big meadow east of the hill. I have searched it thoroughly. I was thinking, “There
have to be remains here, but where?” [Apparently he didn't read Oliver Cowdery's Letter VII. He said the battles took place on the west side. Why would anyone look on the east side of the hill?] No artifacts—not even flint chips of any kind. So I went north to the Clark farm. [On the north? This is as bad as searching on the east.] I stopped and asked the owner’s wife if I could walk over the corn field. “What are you looking for?” “Looking for arrowheads—is it okay?” “Well, sure.” “You must get pestered a lot by people wanting to go out there looking around.” “We’ve been here over 40 years, and you’re the first to come and ask to hunt for arrowheads.” [Maybe because serious searchers had read Letter VII and knew the battles were on the west of the hill?]
If there are artifacts out there, collectors will find them, and they and their friends will be all over
that area. [What does he think they've been doing since 1827?] The Clarks’ fields yielded the same as the one east of the hill: not one single arrowhead and not one single piece of flint chipping. [Exactly what one would expect from Letter VII.] Crisscrossing all those plowed fields, which are hundreds of acres, I found no evidence of any kind. If a large group of people came to this hill and had a big battle, they would have been making and sharpening more tools—artifacts. [I'm curious why this would be so. They had four years to prepare, on both sides. If I'm in a battle for my life, the last thing I'm doing is "making and sharpening" tools. I'd get what I need from my fallen comrades. Nothing in the text suggests people were "making and sharpening more tools" near Cumorah.] If there are no arrowheads, what about all of the broken pieces, the chips, the flakes—leftovers from making and sharpening? Some of these pieces would be smaller than a little fingernail. Where are these pieces? People do not generally pick up this trash. [First, he looks in the wrong place. Then he expects to find tiny pieces of flint from 1400 years ago, produced by people "making and sharpening tools" in the midst of a quick, fierce battle to the end, in fields that have been plowed and farmed for decades. This constitutes expertise in archaeology.]
There is an old pond in our area of Vermont which has old sites around it. The University of
Vermont has created a chart that pictures 26 different styles of points found in this area (the points
date from 11,000–12,000 bc up through the time of European contact). I have found at least one,
usually many, of each type from that site. When I first started looking, I made the friendship of nine
gentlemen who had large collections (5,000 to 6,000 pieces each). On asking these men, “Where do you get most of them?” their answer was something like, “Oh, half from around the pond.” That half would include 2,000 pieces for each of the nine persons, or about 18,000 pieces. I look each year and find 25 to 30. Plus, there are other people hunting there—they’re finding stuff too. It’s more than just a good place to take a walk. But when that spot is put up against the history of events at “Cumorah,” it should pale into insignificance. [Except for some obvious differences. People congregate around water; at this pond, he has over 10,000 years (supposedly) of continuous habitation. The pond is not plowed every year, yet they have found only about 2 pieces/year of habitation. By contrast, on the west side of Cumorah, you have a fierce battle that takes place in a few days 1400 years ago in an area not inhabited before or since, It's an area that has been scoured since 1827 not by nine persons but by thousands of people. It has been farmed for decades. And our author doesn't even look in the west, where Oliver Cowdery said the battles took place, anyway; he looks east and north. This is "good enough" work to confirm the biases of the Mesoamerican seers, but it's laughable to me.]
On this old site in Vermont, even if all of the arrow points were picked up, there are still all of the
chipping areas—big or small, they are present. In these areas a person should find broken arrowheads
that were damaged while being made. Then we should also find the flakes, slabs, and chips in the
various work areas that can be seen throughout the plowed parts. [So does he find the flakes, etc., around the pond? He doesn't say, but it seems far more likely that people would be "making and sharpening tools" around a local pond than that they would do so during a rapid battle to the death.]
Before my first trip to Palmyra, I received the name from a friend of a Mr. J. Sheldon Fisher, who
lived in the small town of Fishers, about 10 miles southwest of the hill (he passed away in 2002). He
owned what is called the Valentown Museum. The museum barn has one floor devoted to early American artifacts; the second floor is full of all types of antiques. He was a great historian of the happenings down through time in that area. He supplied most of the early-1800s furniture used in the area’s visitors’ centers. There was an article about him in the 3 March 2001 Church News on his finds about an old Brigham Young home (Shaun D. Stahle, “Excavating Brigham Young’s mill site”). He worked as a professional archaeologist for the state of New York for over 30 years. So he knew what he was doing.
He said that he had a standing agreement with all of the bulldozer and backhoe people in the
county. They would call him when they were about to start jobs in the area. Many times, he said, “I’d
beat them to the site—I’d get there before they would.” He always watched the soil as they dug it or
pushed it around. But he never found any artifacts of any kind. [This could be useful information if we had a map of where these digs were. Oliver Cowdery said the final battles were in the valley 1 mile wide on the west of the Hill Cumorah. Mr. Fisher lived 10 miles away. Did he attend digs within the valley Oliver specified? We have no way of knowing, but every archaeologist knows you're not going to find a site unless you dig where it's supposed to be.]
I have spent evenings on both trips to Palmyra talking with him about the area and its history. His comment on my last trip was, “Oh, I hope this doesn’t shake your faith.” I answered, “No, it doesn’t. The Church is still true. The Book of Mormon is true. And those plates came out of that hill. ‘The battle’—well, it must have been at some other hill.” [This conclusion doesn't follow from this letter. It's not surprising that the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies published this--it's first-rate bias confirmation, so much so I'm surprised the Interpreter hasn't picked it up--but the report actually corroborates what Oliver wrote; i.e., the battle was not on the east or the north of the Hill Cumorah.]
The Journal of Book of Mormon Studies published an article titled "Looking for Artifacts at New York's Hill Cumorah" in 2005. Here's the abstract:
"Landon Smith gives an account of artifact hunting in the fields surrounding Hill Cumorah, near Palmyra, New York. He presents evidence that the archaeology of New York does not support the idea that Book of Mormon peoples lived in that region or that New York's Hill Cumorah was the scene of the final battles between the Nephites and the Lamanites."
You can read the whole thing here. I'm going to go ahead and copy the entire article here with my notes.
But first, I have to note that BMAF characterized Langdon's account as "The Demise of One 'Mormon Myth' about the Hill Cumorah." See that article here. It's kind of fun that the BMAF article claims Langdon "had not been exposed to the thinking that the 'real' hill Cumorah of the Book of Mormon was located in Mesoamerica," but the editor of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies says Langdon "wrote the letter in response to Dr. Clark's article." Who could read the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies in 2004 and not know about the Mesoamerican theory?
Now read the article with my comments and think about which myth was really involved here.
_______________________
The following account of artifact hunting in the fields surrounding Hill Cumorah, near Palmyra, New York, is from a letter by Langdon Smith of New Haven, Vermont, and addressed to John E. Clark, professor of anthropology at Brigham Young University and director of the BYU New World Archaeological Foundation, based in Chiapas, Mexico. The letter has been slightly edited and is used with the author’s permission. Mr. Smith wrote the letter in response to Dr. Clark’s article “Archaeology and Cumorah Questions” (JBMS 13/1–2, 2004), which presents evidence that the archaeology of New York does not support the idea that Book of Mormon peoples lived in that region or that New York’s Hill Cumorah was the scene of the final battles between the Nephites and the Lamanites. —Ed. [This editorial comment is a lot of fun, as we'll see when I post my comments on Dr. Clark's article in the future.]
On my dairy farm in Vermont in the mid-1950s, while harrowing in the spring, I saw a black, pointed object. It was a black chert “knife.” Wow! I have always been interested in historical things. So I
looked all around, but that was it. Several years ago I found another point. My farm efforts were winding down, so I had more time to look.
Since retiring, I have worked on some state site digs with professionals. By myself I have also found
over 378 new Native American sites, obtaining Vermont State site numbers for all of them. I have made out all the required survey forms and sent the relevant information to the state offices.
At this time, I have close to 5,000 arrowheads with all the other tools—bifaces, preforms, knives,
scrapers, and so on. Altogether I have 17,000 pieces. Each piece has been traced, with the site number
and catalog numbers painted on. Maps are made of each site with X marks locating where each piece
was found. [Well done. It would be interesting to see this map.]
In working with the state, I get to see things that I’m probably not supposed to see—like a New
York State site map. Around Syracuse and the areas in eastern New York State there are many sites
recorded, as there are around and south of Rochester in western New York. But around the Hill
Cumorah area, the closest site numbers are about 60 miles away.
Wherever early American sites are, collectors will find them, plowed fields being the best place
to look. Having been to the Hill Cumorah Pageant at other times, I knew that there were plowed fields
nearby. Since I had the experience of searching and finding sites, my interest in finding sites of possible Nephite/Lamanite arrowheads was high. There were also stories of how Brother Willard Bean found arrowheads by the basketful around the hill and sold them to tourists. If battles took place at the hill, and a lot of people took part—everything sounds about right—the area should be covered with all kinds of artifacts. [It would have been covered in 400 AD. 1600 years later, is that still a reasonable expectation?]
I have made the seven-hour drive twice in the past few years. Both times I traveled to Palmyra
during the early planting season—fields just plowed and harrowed, following a good rain to wash the
dirt off any artifacts.
There are some areas that are not plowed and cannot easily be hunted, including the seating area west of the hill and the car parking area on the west side of the highway. North of the hill there is a gully
going west to east with trees growing along it, circling from west of the road past the north end of the
hill to the east side. Along the whole east side of the hill is a large plowed field. To the north of the gully with trees is the farm that is owned by the Clark family. They have several plowed fields in the area.
Arriving at Cumorah, I have asked workers on the grounds around the visitors’ center and people
inside the center about arrowheads. Their comments were: “Oh yes, people find them around here all the time.” I would ask, “Have you found any yourself?” “Well, no.” “Do you know anyone who has found some?” “No.” “Have you seen any actual pieces found by others?” “No.” [It would be unusual for people working inside the center to find arrowheads, just as it would be for those working on the long-landscaped grounds. A good interview would have asked about the discrepancy between the statements.]
I have walked to the big meadow east of the hill. I have searched it thoroughly. I was thinking, “There
have to be remains here, but where?” [Apparently he didn't read Oliver Cowdery's Letter VII. He said the battles took place on the west side. Why would anyone look on the east side of the hill?] No artifacts—not even flint chips of any kind. So I went north to the Clark farm. [On the north? This is as bad as searching on the east.] I stopped and asked the owner’s wife if I could walk over the corn field. “What are you looking for?” “Looking for arrowheads—is it okay?” “Well, sure.” “You must get pestered a lot by people wanting to go out there looking around.” “We’ve been here over 40 years, and you’re the first to come and ask to hunt for arrowheads.” [Maybe because serious searchers had read Letter VII and knew the battles were on the west of the hill?]
If there are artifacts out there, collectors will find them, and they and their friends will be all over
that area. [What does he think they've been doing since 1827?] The Clarks’ fields yielded the same as the one east of the hill: not one single arrowhead and not one single piece of flint chipping. [Exactly what one would expect from Letter VII.] Crisscrossing all those plowed fields, which are hundreds of acres, I found no evidence of any kind. If a large group of people came to this hill and had a big battle, they would have been making and sharpening more tools—artifacts. [I'm curious why this would be so. They had four years to prepare, on both sides. If I'm in a battle for my life, the last thing I'm doing is "making and sharpening" tools. I'd get what I need from my fallen comrades. Nothing in the text suggests people were "making and sharpening more tools" near Cumorah.] If there are no arrowheads, what about all of the broken pieces, the chips, the flakes—leftovers from making and sharpening? Some of these pieces would be smaller than a little fingernail. Where are these pieces? People do not generally pick up this trash. [First, he looks in the wrong place. Then he expects to find tiny pieces of flint from 1400 years ago, produced by people "making and sharpening tools" in the midst of a quick, fierce battle to the end, in fields that have been plowed and farmed for decades. This constitutes expertise in archaeology.]
There is an old pond in our area of Vermont which has old sites around it. The University of
Vermont has created a chart that pictures 26 different styles of points found in this area (the points
date from 11,000–12,000 bc up through the time of European contact). I have found at least one,
usually many, of each type from that site. When I first started looking, I made the friendship of nine
gentlemen who had large collections (5,000 to 6,000 pieces each). On asking these men, “Where do you get most of them?” their answer was something like, “Oh, half from around the pond.” That half would include 2,000 pieces for each of the nine persons, or about 18,000 pieces. I look each year and find 25 to 30. Plus, there are other people hunting there—they’re finding stuff too. It’s more than just a good place to take a walk. But when that spot is put up against the history of events at “Cumorah,” it should pale into insignificance. [Except for some obvious differences. People congregate around water; at this pond, he has over 10,000 years (supposedly) of continuous habitation. The pond is not plowed every year, yet they have found only about 2 pieces/year of habitation. By contrast, on the west side of Cumorah, you have a fierce battle that takes place in a few days 1400 years ago in an area not inhabited before or since, It's an area that has been scoured since 1827 not by nine persons but by thousands of people. It has been farmed for decades. And our author doesn't even look in the west, where Oliver Cowdery said the battles took place, anyway; he looks east and north. This is "good enough" work to confirm the biases of the Mesoamerican seers, but it's laughable to me.]
On this old site in Vermont, even if all of the arrow points were picked up, there are still all of the
chipping areas—big or small, they are present. In these areas a person should find broken arrowheads
that were damaged while being made. Then we should also find the flakes, slabs, and chips in the
various work areas that can be seen throughout the plowed parts. [So does he find the flakes, etc., around the pond? He doesn't say, but it seems far more likely that people would be "making and sharpening tools" around a local pond than that they would do so during a rapid battle to the death.]
Before my first trip to Palmyra, I received the name from a friend of a Mr. J. Sheldon Fisher, who
lived in the small town of Fishers, about 10 miles southwest of the hill (he passed away in 2002). He
owned what is called the Valentown Museum. The museum barn has one floor devoted to early American artifacts; the second floor is full of all types of antiques. He was a great historian of the happenings down through time in that area. He supplied most of the early-1800s furniture used in the area’s visitors’ centers. There was an article about him in the 3 March 2001 Church News on his finds about an old Brigham Young home (Shaun D. Stahle, “Excavating Brigham Young’s mill site”). He worked as a professional archaeologist for the state of New York for over 30 years. So he knew what he was doing.
He said that he had a standing agreement with all of the bulldozer and backhoe people in the
county. They would call him when they were about to start jobs in the area. Many times, he said, “I’d
beat them to the site—I’d get there before they would.” He always watched the soil as they dug it or
pushed it around. But he never found any artifacts of any kind. [This could be useful information if we had a map of where these digs were. Oliver Cowdery said the final battles were in the valley 1 mile wide on the west of the Hill Cumorah. Mr. Fisher lived 10 miles away. Did he attend digs within the valley Oliver specified? We have no way of knowing, but every archaeologist knows you're not going to find a site unless you dig where it's supposed to be.]
I have spent evenings on both trips to Palmyra talking with him about the area and its history. His comment on my last trip was, “Oh, I hope this doesn’t shake your faith.” I answered, “No, it doesn’t. The Church is still true. The Book of Mormon is true. And those plates came out of that hill. ‘The battle’—well, it must have been at some other hill.” [This conclusion doesn't follow from this letter. It's not surprising that the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies published this--it's first-rate bias confirmation, so much so I'm surprised the Interpreter hasn't picked it up--but the report actually corroborates what Oliver wrote; i.e., the battle was not on the east or the north of the Hill Cumorah.]
From Twelfth Night, "I say, there is no darkness but ignorance, in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog."
ReplyDeleteWhy would a man choose for himself to a position of ignorance like this? I can only hope he can see beyond his own nose now. How are his efforts in searching for arrowheads helpful in proving anything? My oh my, What a strange stumbling block he's created for himself. Really? Arrowheads? Come on. This is too strange.
Hugh Nibley was right when he said, "Nothing illustrates better than archaeology the inadequacy of human knowledge at any given time."
The other strange thing is that was published... I don't get it. Who are the people in charge here? Do they have any sort of background in critical thinking?