Sanctuary on the Trail™ - Site owners of the Paleo-Indian site in Northern Virginia are seeking experts knowledgeable in paleo-indian pre-history. The couple have results from a 5-year study that includes notes from the 2011 Archaeological Excavation, a final report ready for peer review and artifacts.
     Jasper (below) discovered early in level B confirmed the presence of human usage at the site. Jasper does not occur in outcrops above the site; thus, it had to be carried into the site.
     Jasper is assumed to be from the Front Royal area and related to the Paleoindian occupation of the Shenandoah River; however, it could have been retrieved from the Shenandoah River.

      The jasper below, found during the excavation, amplifies the site’s Paleoindian association. It has a heavily redden area; also it has likens from lying under the ground for 12,000 years.

      This jasper thumbnail scraper is a classic Paleoindian artifact; especially noted is the spur graver (above). The spur was examined microscopically (400x) and shows striations. Both faces have length-wise parallel flake scars. The spur was used, and the scraper end shows signs of being used.
     The tool is unusually small and was found on the northeastern corner of the excavated square. It was heat treated.

     The University of Washington conducted thermoluminescence (TL) dating that confirms the artifacts last use at 10,470 years before present.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA - Three archaeologists from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources (DHR) office and a hydrogeologist from Maryland visited the Paleo-Indian site here today.
     Tom Klatka, archaeologist from DHR’s community services division regional offices Western Regional Preservation Office (Roanoke College, Salem) provided sound advice and recommendations to site owners into the importance of preservation. Tom advocates for local communities and helps get their voices heard. He has 26 years’ experience as an archaeologist.
     DHR’s division of Preservation Incentives Easements Joanna Wilson Green, archaeologist and Michael Clem, archaeologist and easement program stewardship coordinator, helped confirm the rarity of finding jasper which is not indigenous to this portion of Northern Virginia.      DHR is the State Historic Preservation Office in Virginia responsible for fostering, encouraging and supporting the stewardship of Virginia's significant historic architectural, archaeological and cultural resources.
     Dennis Cumbie, CPG groundwater hydro-geologist, from Rockledge LLC., Sharpsburg Maryland, shed light on the natural occurrences of stone formations as they developed millions of years ago. He also suggested the site owners get opinions from quaternary geomorphology experts. Dennis is a senior level hydrogeologist with 18+ years experience in water supply investigation, ground- and surface-water monitoring, water quality and watershed management.
     Site owners Chris and René White gave the 4-member team a tour of key features to include the concentric rings, stacked rock linage, alter, triangle formation and day clock.

     Discussions included the possibility of conducting future soil samples and additional Thermoluminescence (TL) dating. The team shared numerous suggestions for further research and analysis to include consulting with specialists from Virginia Tech University, James Madison University and University of Georgia.
     “We welcomed the team to observe and analyze our findings,” said Chris who discovered the above-ground Paleo-Indian site on his property in Northern Virginia. “The highlight of our conversation for me was how these ancient findings impact humanity at large and how we find relevance in our current world view.”

By Josette Keelor
Northern Virginia Daily

BLUEMONT -- The Native American Church of Virginia started in 2009, but a recent discovery of an artifact dating back 10,470 years to a Paleo-Indian site has inspired Rene White (Feather) and Chris (Comeswithclouds) White to call it the oldest church in continuous operation in the world....

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL STORY

Photo by Emy Dean

Washington Post via AP

BLUEMONT, Va. — Concentric stone circles near rocks weighing more than a ton — apparently aligned to mark solar events — are believed to be part of a Paleo-Indian site in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Clarke County that an expert has dated to about 10,000 B.C. (Full Story here.)

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Original story by: The Winchester Star, http://www.winchesterstar.com

The Spout Run paleosite (44CK151) in Clarke County, Virginia is the oldest, extent, above-ground site in North American. Due to its location in some of the harshest ground in northern Virginia, this site has laid open on the ground just like the Paleoindians left it 12,000 years ago. It served them in a number of ways, such as a calendar for the annual seasons, a place where they held social and religious ceremonies, and a place from which they could control the flintknapping activities at the famous Thunderbird paleosite in Warren County, Virginia. The Paleoindians were making stone tools out of jasper, a favorite stone. This stone is found in the upper Shenandoah River valley.

The principal archaeological investigator is Wm Jack Hranicky RPA, who has been practicing archaeology for over 40 years in Virginia. He is the Director of the Virginia Rockart Survey. He has found, recorded, and published five prehistoric solstice sites in the Middle Atlantic area. The Spout Run’s landowner, Chris White, of Native American decent, brought the site to Hranicky’s attention who immediately recognized it as a possible solstice site. With a small excavation, they established the site as Paleoindian Period.

The excavation discovered two jasper tools and fire-cracked rocks, indicating a hearth. No other artifacts have been found on the site. Only one 5x5 ft square was excavated which left 95% of the site for the future.

Spout Run has direct alignments with both solar solstices, and the site is aligned physically east-to-west with the equinoxes. It has 15 above-ground component areas which have been found so far. The main site is composed of stone concentric rings and solar markers. This area has stone pointers which directly aim at the summer and winter solstices and the equinoxes. Another major feature is a stone altar which is aligned with the summer solstice.

By using the morning sun’s position on the horizon of Blue Ridge Mountain, the Paleoindians could determine the end of the summer after which they left the area and returned to the coastal plain where winters were much more comfortable. Additionally, jasper is difficult to flake into tools when it is below 40 degrees.

One rock pointer was tested for a lunar orientation for the last full moon before the winter solstice. Other lunar markers probably exist, but presently they have not been discovered.

A shelter was discovered in the site’s upland area that contains Indian rockart: two hand glyphs and a geometric print. Near the top of the Blue Ridge Mountain, there is a large boulder with two incised hand impressions There are now 16 known rockart sites in Virginia. Two other rockart sites in Virginia contain concentric rings, altar, and hand glyphs.

The Spout Run site will make a major contribution to our understanding of the paleotimes along the entire Atlantic coast. The Paleoindians are often equated with Mammoth hunting; they needed and made stone tools to hunt them. The upper Shenandoah River valley’s jasper provided the stone for these hunting tools.

By Chris and René White
Clarke Daily News

The purpose of this letter is not to advocate for or against the preservation of the Cool Spring Battlefield.

Although, it is admirable and significant to dedicate parks, erect monuments to recognize our ancestors and preserve such treasures for future understanding; the Battle of Cool Spring was an important battle in American Civil War (fought July 17–18, 1864) and an important part of the Valley Campaigns of 1864.

But rather, we write to you as a possibility to initiate a conversation on preservation of an older Clarke County Virginia land-legacy – that of Native Americans.

There has been much debate about the cost versus value of preserving the history of a Civil War battle that took place on both sides of the river in 1864. While the Civil War is an important part of American history, the Virginia National Golf Course may hold another much older record of our national past. Native American artifacts dating back over 10,000 years have already been recovered from the Holy Cross Abbey directly across the river from the golf course.

We have a hint of artifacts at the Holy Cross Abbey. What possibly could lie unearthed directly across the river at the golf course; being that it has the natural advantage of flat vistas on each side of the river?

There are private collectors who have unearthed many artifacts in this county. Our Archaeologist reports that our Spout Run PaleoIndian site (Virginia Department of Historic Resources site # 44CK151) is the oldest, extant, above-ground site on the North American continent, dating approximately 12,000 years old. We started with rock rings, now we have a 2-mile complex with 15 above-ground features including two sets of right-hand prints and more.

Additionally, pre-historic PaleoIndian collections from the Warren County Thunderbird site are on display at our National Smithsonian Museum. How exciting this could be for Clarke County?

What a county! What a state! What a national and humanity treasure!

Let us not look at our history through the eyes of guilt for the mistakes and shortcomings that may have been made. Instead, let us view our history for the possibilities of the future we can create.

Clarke County land and legacy is richly dotted with a far more extensive history than the Civil War battle, mortar shells and metal buckles. Clarke County holds rich remains of a native people who lived here continually for thousands of years.

The land is important, the people too. By limiting land preservation efforts to 1864, are we compressing the legacy of our land to 150 years?

Our history books seem to encourage that. They seldom refer to the sophisticated Native American agricultural techniques practiced in Virginia before this state was named. Nor to the managed landscapes and river fish-weirs, where Native American hunting and fishing alternated with community and croplands arranged along waterways. History books seldom note that Native nutrition here was far superior to what was available in Europe before the colonial era. Nor that Native knowledge of astronomy informed farming calendars as well as navigation. Nor highlight Native American’s extensive societal contribution of adding natural plant medicines to the U.S. and modern-world pharmacopoeia. Nor is highlighted their relationship with Creator and life lived in harmony with creation.

Why do we avoid talking about Native peoples’ complex religious and social systems? Or how they created vast trade networks that extended thousands of miles, including up and down the Shenandoah River? Just 15-minutes outside our county border and on the Shenandoah River is one of the best-known PaleoIndian sites on the North America continent – the Thunderbird Flint-Run PaleoIndian jasper quarry.

The historical significance of our natural and cultural resources go back much further than a few hundred years. The people who lived here, the life they lived in Clarke County, was sustainable. What an intriguing culture.

Look no further than across the river from Cool Spring Battlefield to the Cool Spring House at the Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Va. On display is a chronological collection of Native tools found in Clarke County dating from 9,500 years B.C. old and leading up to a few hundred years ago. These archeological finds are safely enclosed in a glass case, thanks to the late Trappist Brother James Sommers, a lay archaeologist who unearthed the treasures from the abbey’s pastures and river banks.

Look still, to the Clarke County Historical Association Museum and Archives in Berryville where a replica of the “Great Law of Peace” wampum belt is on exhibit. It serves as a reminder of Native contributions to Virginia and our nation. How different would our U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights be if someone had not preserved that?

Given to the Iroquois by the “Great Peacemaker” (Creator), the “Great Law of Peace” formed the Iroquois Confederacy. between 1,000 and 1,450 AD; 326 to 776 years before the framing of the

U.S Constitution. Many Native tribes used it for peace agreements before this country was named “The United States of America.”

In fact, 40 years before the framing of the U.S. Constitution, our nation’s founding father’s (Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams) began drawing much inspiration from articles of the “Great Law of Peace” and the Iroquois Elders. Before the final draft of the Constitution was accepted, history records that the Iroquois Elders counseled the signers and drafters of the Constitution and Bill of Rights on many occasions.

History says, our founding fathers were “bewildered” at how the power of the government comes up from the people, rather than down from a ruler (thus “We the People”). It was a “foreign concept” that individual people had rights, “God given rights.” That is to say, “all people.”

If our leaders understood the depth of these words, “We the People” there would be have been no need for the women’s rights movement of the 1920’s nor civil rights movement of the 1960’s. These are God given rights “given” to “all people.” Do we understand it yet?

We know of this Constitutional contribution because community took the time to preserve the wampum belts. Native ancestors recorded the “Great Law of Peace” through oral tradition and into symbols and pictographs of wampum belts.

Right now, someone reading this may be unaware that a picture of a wampum belt in his/her pocket/wallet. It is printed on the reverse side of the 2010 U.S. one-dollar gold coins.

Remember in 2007, when the Susan B. Anthony coin was running out and Congress authorized a Sacagawea gold dollar? Since its production, the Native American series of coins reflects Native American contributions to agriculture” (2009 version) and the Great Law of Peace, the wampum belt and Native influence to “government” (2010 version).

Today, Native people are still living in Clarke County. Ask your neighbors and friends, and someone will say they can trace their roots to an existing tribe or are curious to whether they have Native ancestry.

Meanwhile, some Clarke County residents are unearthing remnants of this ancient culture. They collect and store their finds the best way they can. In rooms in their homes. In boxes. In closets. Collectively there is enough to support a large gallery.

In the military, we say a phrase for lost Americans, “We Will Never Forget.” Does this exclude Native Americans who lived here before us?

The importance of keeping the Native story alive in Clarke County enriches the history of our county. It allows residents and visitors alike to gain a deeper understanding of our past historical occurrences, both good and bad. We each have our own stories to tell, like trees with new foliage and thousands of years of root systems.

As our conversation continues and we discover a more fuller history, we can fill the silence of our Native American history to offer new perspectives on Clarke County’s past? Who? What? When? Where? How? Why?

“Who cares?” some may say.

Well someone’s children of tomorrow might! Is it being responsible to appreciate land for its collective past? Remembering a people for their contributions. Their sacrifices?

Will our unborn generations care what we leave for them? Or not leave? Could what we do now alter the historic character of our history? Of our present? Of our future? Of our land?

If we do not preserve our history, is it like destroying a book that cannot be re-written? Or hiding a story that cannot be retold?

And what a magnificent opportunity to tell a fuller story and not keep it buried. The lives that were here were sustainable. They lived. They thrived. Isn’t that marvelous?

There is much to be learned from a society that would sustain its society, culture, resources and life – without a need for our modern technology. There is much to learn from the land too. In preserving it. Even if we don’t care right now. Preserving it gives opportunities to future generations to learn from it.

Who knows …? It may be all of our elders and ancestors … yours … mine … theirs … whose courage created this opportunity. Our land. Our legacy. Now. We get to decide what we leave behind.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS.

CHRIS (Comeswithclouds) WHITE is an Elder and Roadman of Native American decent and founder of a Native American Church of Virginia. He also unearthed Clarke County history when he found the oldest, extant, above-ground site in North America literally in his own back yard, according to lead Archaeologist Jack Hranicky. Most recently Chris found petroglyphs or rock engravings on rocks within the Spout-Run complex. Hranicky confirmed the glyphs and has been briefing his findings to several archeological societies across the nation. The team started with rock rings, now they have a 2-mile complex with 15 above-ground features including two sets of right-hand prints. He is married to René White.

RENÉ WHITE (Feather) is a Native American woman and retired military veteran of 22 years serving in the U.S. Air Force. While on active duty, her military accounts covered 11 countries and included homeland defense, natural disasters, cyber, intelligence, media relations, internal information, community relations, recruiting and more. She is an artist, volunteers in the community and says she appreciates being “resourceful, grateful and humble.”

They are both residents of the historic and beautiful northern Shenandoah Valley.

By Val Van Meter
Winchester Star
(Distributed by Associated Press
Re-Printed by Native Times)

BLUEMONT, Va. (AP) – Rock circles on a spit of mountain land along Spout Run may be the oldest above-ground Paleoindian site in North America, according to Alexandria archaeologist Jack Hranicky.

He will deliver an address about the site – which he dates to 10,000 B.C. – to the Society for American Archaeology next April in Memphis, Tenn.

The site could put Clarke County “on the Paleo map,” Hranicky said.

The set of concentric circles drew the attention of landowners Chris and Rene White as they were planning to create a medicine wheel on their 20 acres south of Va. 7 on Blue Ridge Mountain.

After talks with his spiritual elder in Utah, Chris, a descendant of the Cherokee people, and his wife, from the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina, decided to open their property to spiritual leaders of Native American peoples who have business in the Washington area.

The area including the rock circles was the location that drew Chris White in.

When he was building his house, White said, he would often walk by the creek to take a break.

There, “a still, small voice said, `This land is important.' I didn't know what it meant, but I took it to heart,” he said.

As White prepared to put his medicine wheel on the site, he realized that a circle of stones was there – actually, several concentric circles.

“From my experience as a contractor, I knew that was not natural,” he said. “I realized something was already here.”

Someone suggested that White contact Hranicky, who had studied five other Paleoindian sites in Virginia.

He said he saw the pattern in the rocks as soon as he arrived at the site, noting three concentric circles at the western edge, which he believes was a ceremonial area. The inner circle could outline a bonfire space, he said, while the outer ring may have been an area for participants in the ritual to sit or stand.

To the east, touching this area, is another circle that Hranicky calls the observatory.

Here, rocks on the edge of the circle align with features on Blue Ridge Mountain to the east.

From a center rock, over a boundary rock, a line would intersect the feature called Bears Den Rocks on the mountain. Standing on that center rock, looking toward Bears Den, a viewer can see the sun rise on the day of the summer solstice, Hranicky said.

To prove that point, White and his wife took pictures of the sunrise last June 21, he said.

To the right of this rock around the circle, another lines up to Eagle Rock on the Blue Ridge, and with sunrise at the fall equinox (around Sept. 22-23), he said.

Yet a third points to a saddle on the mountain where the sun makes its appearance at the winter solstice (around Dec. 21-22).

“These are true solar positions,” he said.

A dozen feet east of the summer solstice rock is a mound of boulders, piled up, which Hranicky designates as “the altar.”

Hranicky, 69, a registered professional archaeologist who taught anthropology at Northern Virginia community College and St. Johns High School College, has been working in the field of archaeology, for 40 years.

“I had to wait 70 years to find a site like this,” he said.

Dating the site took some digging.

Hranicky was convinced that it was a Paleoindian site, based on the configuration of the concentric circles, the solstice alignment and the altar he has seen at other such sites. But he wanted an artifact.

He picked a five-foot-square area to dig, carefully numbering every rock and setting it aside, to be replaced later.

The reason for that, Hranicky said, is that in the future better methods may be available for dating sites, and he wanted to disturb as little as possible.

His test pit turned up three artifacts. One was a thin blade of quartzite. The second was a small piece of jasper, a type of quartz rock and an important find, Hranicky said.

Jasper was prized by Paleoindians for making tools. It was hard and durable, but could still be worked by Stone Age methods. They traveled miles to find sites where jasper nodules protruded from native rock, and quarried the stone to make projectile points and tools.

The third artifact was the most important. It was a tiny piece of jasper, no bigger than the end of a thumb, but this rock had been worked, Hranicky said. It was a tool, a mini-scraper.

“You don't know how thrilled I was when we found that little bitty tool,” he said.

Jasper on the site ties what Hranicky believes was a ceremonial and heavenly observation site to another proven Paleoindian site just to the south of Clarke County in Warren County – the Thunderbird site.

William Gardiner of Catholic University excavated that site for several years. Indians camped on the east bank of the South Fork of the Shenandoah River and quarried jasper for tool making from bluffs on the west bank.

The Thunderbird site is dated to 10,000 B.C.

Hranicky's theory postulates that Paleoindians, searching for jasper for tool-making, followed the Shenandoah River from the Atlantic coastal areas some 12,000 years ago.

This coincides with the Younger Dryas period, when the climate turned abruptly colder and drier.

Jasper, Hranicky said, can't be “knapped” as easily in cold weather, so it would make sense for Indians traveling to find the stone to do so in the summer months.

An Indian “priest” would find it an advantage to know when summer offered the best work climate, marked by the summer solstice, and when the season was drawing to a close and cold weather was on the way (the fall equinox).

A leader who noticed how points on the mountain marked these calendar moments and could predict, with a rock “clock,” these dates, would be a “genius” to his tribe, Hranicky said.

Such times would be natural days for social celebrations of some type, he added. “They visited this place for a reason, like going to church.”

The visitors would have lived on the west bank of the river, a mile away, where it would be easier to find food, he suggested.

White noted that, to Native Americans, stones are considered “grandfathers.”

“If you see all these grandfathers, that makes it a place of wisdom.”

Water, he added, is a symbol of life. Spout Run, which ends in a sizeable waterfall at the Shenandoah River, would be both eye-catching and significant, while things that emerge from the underground, such as the springs that feed Spout Run, are a sign of rebirth.

All these characteristics could make the spot of the concentric circles significant to native people, White said.

Hranicky is applying to have the Whites' stone circles added to Virginia's list of archaeological sites.

“It will be recorded,” said state archaeologist Mike Barber.

Barber said several ceremonial observatories across North America are attributed to Paleoindians.

“Jack has recorded several of these types,” he said. “The real problem is proving what these things are. We haven't arrived at that level yet.”

Barber said he has received a preliminary report on the site from Hranicky, and is trying to schedule a time to visit it.

Is the Clarke County site an ancient solar observatory for early Americans?

Barber is cautious.

“I'm not to the point where I can say that this is one of them.”

By Edward Leonard
Clarke Daily News

Bear’s Den Rock has captured the attention of travelers in the northern Shenandoah Valley since colonial times and for thousands of years before by the indigenous people who hunted and fished in the region. Now, a local archaeologist believes that the prominent outcrop just south of Virginia’s Route 7 in Clarke County is a part of a larger 12,000 year old celestial calendar used by Native Americans to mark the changing of the seasons.

 “Although archaeological sites have been discovered across the United States, there’s nothing like this above ground or this old in North America,” says Dr. Jack Hranicky about the site located just off Ebenezer Road. Hranicky, also known as “Dr. Jack” to friends and associates, is a Virginia Registered Professional Archaeologist (RPA) credited with authoring 32 books on North America’s prehistory and discoverer of over a half-a-dozen other Native American solstice sites.

“This preserved site has numerous properties that prove its use 12,000 years ago by Paleo-Indians and classifies it as a major ceremonial and calendar site on the Shenandoah River,” said Dr. Jack “I classify it as an ‘Horizon Observation Station’ which produced a Paleo-calendar for early Americans.”

The story behind the presumed celestial calendar’s recent discovery is, in many ways, as intriguing as its ancient origins.

According to Dr. Jack, 12,000 years ago Paleo-Indians traveled throughout the area known today as the Shenandoah Valley and Piedmont Plateau. Although the Piedmont area provided the early Americans with a nearly unlimited food supply, the first Americans still ventured north and west along the Shenandoah River into areas that include modern-day Clarke County.

 “As the Paelo-Indians moved north along the river, Bear’s Den Rocks would have been a very prominent landmark for them,” says Dr. Jack. “They also would have been able to clearly see the site where we are standing right now.”

Dr. Jack is standing in the middle of several large, concentric stone rings – each ring inside a larger ring. The rings were discovered by Clarke County resident Chris White on property he purchased in 2000 located about two miles southwest of Bear’s Den on a lower bench of the Blue Ridge.

Not long after purchasing the property White began building a house on a beautiful rise overlooking his 20-acre parcel.

Medicine wheels, or sacred hoops, are constructed by laying stones in a particular pattern on the ground, often following the basic pattern of a stone center surrounded by an outer ring of stones with “spokes,”or lines of rocks radiating from the center. Originally, and still today, medicine wheels are constructed by certain indigenous peoples of North America for various reasons including astronomical, ritual, healing, and teaching purposes.

As White began clearing fallen trees and brush from his hoped-for medicine wheel site, something extraordinary began to unfold. As White removed debris, pre-existing circles of concentric rocks began to be revealed.  As White continued to work, he soon noticed another circular rock pattern next to the first circle.

At first White didn’t know what to think. Could it be that the stone rings might be nothing more than a natural anomaly created by some long forgotten rock slide or other random event? But certain features of the stone rings piqued White’s curiosity. For instance, why did it appear that larger stones were positioned at cardinal points within the ring? And why were there two rings positioned adjacent to each other?

White, who himself is of Native American heritage stemming from the Cherokee Nation, decided that a professional archaeologist might be able to give him a better idea of whether the rings had been formed  naturally or were man-made.

White then got in touch with Dr. Jack.

Like any scientist, Hranicky was skeptical at first, but was none-the-less intrigued by White’s find. After some preliminary investigation Dr. Jack decided that the site deserved additional archaeological investigation. With the assistance of Chris and Rene’ White, Hranicky conducted the first scientific excavation uncovering a small five by five foot area at the Spout Run Site that so far has produced jasper tools and other supporting artifacts dating back approximately 12,000 years before present.

“Finding jasper tools here is very important,” Hranicky said. “Jasper does not occur naturally in this area so its presence on this site is very important in establishing that Paleo-indians were once here.”

While the small pieces of jasper may be important from a science detective’s point of view, the more extraordinary feature from a layman’s perspective is that the ancient solstice calendar appears to still accurately mark the changing of the seasons today just as it must have done more than twelve millenia ago.

According to White and Hranicky, a person standing in the center of the stone rings is able to focus their line-of-sight with one of several large stone markers placed at precise positions in the ring’s outer-most perimeter.  The stone perimeter points can then be aligned with prominent landmarks further from the circle – for example Bear’s Den Rocks nearly two miles away.

Based on the stone alignments, Hranicky says, a viewer standing in the middle of the circle will observe the Sun rise directly over Bear’s Den Rocks on the Summer Solstice – the Sun’s furthest apparent northern position.

Harnicky claims that a similar Winter Solstice alignment coincides between a stone pillar in the circle and another prominent geologic feature high above on the ridge. Not far from the stone ring is a pile of stones that Hranicky believes may have once served as an altar based on its alignment with other features of the site.

Although on a recent Autumn day Bear’s Den rocks are obscured by the thick leaves and trees, Dr. Jack says that when the stone ring and altar were built some 12,000 years ago there were no trees on the mountain thus giving the Paleo-indians a clear line of sight from the center of the circle to the stone altar and continuing further up the mountain to Bear’s Den Rocks.

According to Dr. Jack, the stone calendar site was probably built not only as a place to hold ceremonies and observe solar positions, but also as a location for jasper tool-making. However, the primary value to the ancient tribes surely would have been in its importance to their survival in predicting the changing seasons.

“The site investigation included mapping and exploring resources around the site and confirms that Paleo-indian priests carried out ceremonies here using the angle of the sun, concentric rings and a stone altar that stands about five-feet tall,” Hranicky said. Hranicky is in the process of registering the site as a state-recognized prehistoric site with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and as a National Historic Landmark with the U.S. Department of Interior.

Hranicky and the Whites have coined the name “Spout Run” for the prehistoric site after Spout Run stream that winds through the property before making its way further down the mountain and into the Shenandoah River.

Hranicky who believes that Clarke County’s Spout Run Site is the oldest above-ground Paleo-indian ceremonial site in North America, will be presenting his research on October 22 during the Annual Meeting of the West Virginia Archaeological Society in Charleston, West Virginia.

“This prehistoric site located in Northern Virginia is of unique national significance and offers a glimpse into a highly developed culture living in Virginia over 12,000 years ago,” Hranicky said. “The site has above-ground concentric rings, jasper tools, Summer/Fall focus and calendar using the summer solstice as a start for the year.

Jasper is a cryptocrystalline stone in geology known to be a preferred mineral to fashion tools by Paleo-indians during the Younger Dryers period, which occurred after the Earth returned very quickly into near glacial conditions of cold, dry and windy. Dating also corresponds to the length of time that the Paleo-indians mined for jasper at the Thunderbird (Flint Run) Paleo-indian Complex in Warren County” Hranicky remarked.

Thunderbird is a jasper quarry excavated in 1974 by Catholic University’s late William Gardner. Gardner was among the first to uncover evidence that Paleo-indians used the Shenandoah River to reach jasper quarries there.

“Our goal is to seek donations and funds to help preserve the site for future generations,” said Spout Run owner Chris White. “Anyone interested in helping preserve this sacred site can contact White at the Native American Church of Virginia at [email protected]”.