Saturday, January 17, 2009

New book by Chapter Member Ed Lenik: "MAKING PICTURES IN STONE: AMERICAN INDIAN ROCK OF THE NORTHEAST"

MAKING PICTURES IN STONE is a companion volume to Lenik's PICTURE ROCKS: NATIVE AMERICAN ROCK ART IN THE NORTHEAST WOODLANDS.  


Lenik's new volume adds coverage of  eastern Pennsylvania,  Maryland and the Washington DC area including sites on the Susquehanna and Potomac Rivers, their tributaries  and their watersheds.  New sites and objects from the New England states, Atlantic Canada, New York and New Jersey are also included.


MAKING PICTURES IN STONE is organized by type of artifact and covers portable rock art such as  decorated tools, pendants and gorgets, effigy heads and figures as well as as boulders and other non portable sites.


Lenik opens with a discussion of the Algonquian people in the Northeast who inhabited these areas when the Europeans arrived. He discusses their lifeways and belief systems as background to understanding the images they left behind.


Lenik introduces a pioneer rock art recorder, Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College from 1777 to 1795.  Stiles was the first to record rock art sites such as Dighton Rock.  George Washington is also a source of observations and comments on Native American rock art and carvings.


Chapters on culturally altered trees and landscapes in myth and legend expand the concept of rock art and address the issue of the comparative paucity of Northeastern rock art versus the wealth of Southwestern rock art in North America.


MAKING PICTURES IN STONE is well illustrated with photographs and drawings.  The reader is invited to consider the images, their locations and their significance.  


Professional archaeologists will find this volume a welcome addition to their bookshelves and everyone who always wanted to be an archaeologist will enjoy reading about sites and objects to be found in the Northeast.


Lenik is an active regional archaeologist who has investigated many historic and prehistoric sites in northern New Jersey, and southeastern New York.  A former member of the Wayne Township (NJ) Historical Commission, Lenik ran the Wayne Archaeological Lab at the Van Riper-Hopper House for many years.  He is a past president of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey and the Eastern States Archaeological Association.  Lenik is a founder and active member of the Eastern States Rock Art Research Association.

MAKING PICTURES IN STONE: AMERICAN INDIAN ROCK OF THE NORTHEAST

joins Lenik's other books which include:

IRON MINE TRAILS

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF WAYNE, NJ

INDIANS IN THE RAMAPOS

PICTURE ROCKS, NATIVE AMERICAN ROCK ART IN THE NORTHEST WOODLANDS

MAX SCHRABICH: ROCKSHELTER ARCHAEOLOGIST

A CLAY TOBACCO PIPE SAMPLER


Congratulations Ed!


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