This caught me eye because of my interest in the Welsh Quakers of Pennsylvania. "Rowland Ellis" was the Welsh Quaker responsible for bringing the place name "Bryn Mawr" with him from Wales (http://wbo.llgc.org.uk/en/s-ELLI-ROW-1650.html ). It's fascinating to learn that there was evidently a whole other "Rowland Ellis" in Burlington County (http://goo.gl/PBIXu). Jerseyman, do you have any idea whether the Burlington County Ellises were originally Welsh?
Bog Iron: Can You Dig it, or What is the Marl of the Story?
- Thread starter Jerseyman
- Start date
This caught me eye because of my interest in the Welsh Quakers of Pennsylvania. "Rowland Ellis" was the Welsh Quaker responsible for bringing the place name "Bryn Mawr" with him from Wales (http://wbo.llgc.org.uk/en/s-ELLI-ROW-1650.html ). It's fascinating to learn that there was evidently a whole other "Rowland Ellis" in Burlington County (http://goo.gl/PBIXu). Jerseyman, do you have any idea whether the Burlington County Ellises were originally Welsh?
Great photos, Spung-Man. I never would have guessed that those things had a creamy nougat center.
Thanks H-H,
And the seed ore is hard-coated licorice Good-&-Plenty? Actually ironstone geodes, if that is a legitimate term for them (perhaps vugs?), may have cultural significance. Geode origin hypothesis is that iron-fixing bacteria so thoroughly digested organic material that only pigment remained. Some have been found in association with pre-contact cultures, whole and broken. It is argued that these may have even been used for body painting – ochre and bear fat...prehistoric Maybelline.
S-M
And the seed ore is hard-coated licorice Good-&-Plenty? Actually ironstone geodes, if that is a legitimate term for them (perhaps vugs?), may have cultural significance. Geode origin hypothesis is that iron-fixing bacteria so thoroughly digested organic material that only pigment remained. Some have been found in association with pre-contact cultures, whole and broken. It is argued that these may have even been used for body painting – ochre and bear fat...prehistoric Maybelline.
S-M
Sounds delicious, S-M
Like a bucket o' wings at the end of a Superbowl party.
There's an exhibit in the library on North Haven Island off the coast of Rockland, Maine, where they excavated villages of the "Red Paint People." Evidently, there are several sites in Maine:
"Perhaps the first to study such sites was Bangor Mayor Augustus Hamlin. In 1882, Orland farmer Foster Soper showed him several blood-red puddles in the plowed field on the banks of Alamoosook Lake. Near the puddles they found pecked, ground, and polished stone artifacts that differed from those found in the better-known shell midden sites along the coast. Since then, similar pits have been discovered and excavated by people with widely varying levels of competence. One superb early excavation was conducted near Soper's initial discovery by C. C. Willoughby of Harvard University's Peabody Museum. Willoughby later exhibited the artifacts and a model of his excavations at the World's Columbian Exhibition held in Chicago in 1892.
"Far more aggressive and much less careful was Warren K. Moorehead, of the R. S. Peabody Foundation at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, who opened several cemeteries between 1912 and 1920. Avid interest in these cemeteries has continued unabated to recent times, and it now appears that few if any undisturbed Red Paint cemeteries remain. Archaeologists have given the label Moorehead phase to the culture that produced these elaborate mortuary remains.
"Some archaeologists compared these spectacular cemeteries to the relatively humble artifacts from middens left by more recent cultures and concluded that there were no links between the two. They speculated wildly about the origins and disappearance of the "Red Paint People." The perception that these Indians were not related to later cultures began to change after the 1930s, when Douglas Byers, Moorehead's successor at the Peabody Foundation, discovered red-paint burials beneath the Nevin shell midden at Blue Hill Falls. Shortly thereafter, John H. Rowe recovered artifacts like those from red-paint cemeteries at a shell midden in Sorrento.
More recently archaeologists have excavated villages at the Turner Farm site on the island of North Haven, the Eddington Bend site on the Penobscot River, the Goddard site in Brooklin, and the Candage site on Vinalhaven. This, along with other data, make it clear that the Red Paint People were indeed Indians, although they seem to have undergone some sort of cultural flowering that set them apart from their forebears."
Source: http://www.mpbn.net/homestom/mptschap1.html
I always assumed that if there were a lot of iron oxides present in the soil, or in sandstone rocks in the area, that I was close to one.
H-H,
I was not aware of Maine’s Red Paint people, who sound similar to the Midwest's Red Ocher people. Apparently both cultures covered their deceased head-to-toe with red paint during burial. Geode hollows can, albeit rarely, reach basketball-like proportions. Still I doubt the Pinelands geodes were of sufficient ochre-fill to accomplish that kind of coverage.
BR,
Satellite imagery is probably not the best remote-sensing tool for the task of finding old ore diggings. I’d be surprised if a spectral signature could be discerned, for instance, by vegetational or moisture differences. High-resolution Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) images might be worth reviewing when better processed data becomes available for the Pine Barrens.
S-M
I was not aware of Maine’s Red Paint people, who sound similar to the Midwest's Red Ocher people. Apparently both cultures covered their deceased head-to-toe with red paint during burial. Geode hollows can, albeit rarely, reach basketball-like proportions. Still I doubt the Pinelands geodes were of sufficient ochre-fill to accomplish that kind of coverage.
BR,
Satellite imagery is probably not the best remote-sensing tool for the task of finding old ore diggings. I’d be surprised if a spectral signature could be discerned, for instance, by vegetational or moisture differences. High-resolution Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) images might be worth reviewing when better processed data becomes available for the Pine Barrens.
S-M
Hinchman's Hill:
While there may be some familial connectivity way back when in Great Britain, the progenitor of the Ellis family arrived in Springfield Township, Burlington County from Yorkshire, England, sometime between 1680 and 1683. For more information on the Ellis family, please see John Clement's Sketches of First Emigrant Settlers of Newton Township (1877).
Best regards,
Jerseyman