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:
This is an example of how M2C lenses blind you to what would be obvious if you just took them off for a moment.
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.]
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