The Bourne Stone is an archaeological curiosity located in the town of Bourne,

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

. The stone is a chunk of

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

, upon which two lines of carvings were made.

History

The Bourne Historical Society has written that the stone probably started as a doorstep of a Native American meeting house around 1680, then passed through several owners, landing at the Aptucxet Trading Post in Bourne about 1930. The stone has been displayed at the historical center since 2003. In 2004, Larry J. Zimmerman explained his own theory about the Bourne Stone in ''Collaboration In Archaeological Practice: Engaging Descendant Communities.'' He invited Norse runic expert Michael Barnes to examine the stone. Barnes stated that the markings were definitely not runic. Zimmerman and Patricia Emerson, Minnesota archaeologist, suggested that the markings looked like Native American

petroglyphs A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

. In 2016, Plymouth Archaeological Rediscovery Project member archaeologist Craig Chartier upon closer examination and looking at a

stone rubbing Stone rubbing is the practice of creating an image of surface features of a stone on paper. The image records features such as natural textures, inscribed patterns or lettering. By rubbing hard rendering materials over the paper, pigment is depo ...

as well as the stone itself came to the conclusion that it was "potentially one of the most important late Prehistoric to Contact Period artifacts ever identified in New England" and was created by the "Native people of the Manomet/Herring Pond community."

References

{{coord, 41, 44, 36.0, N, 70, 35, 48.7, W, region:US, display=title Bourne, Massachusetts Inscriptions in unknown languages North American runestone hoaxes Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact