398 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



inscription from No Man's Land which, judging from its whole character, is of 

 recent time. All the others are natural grooves or inscrfptions whicli without 

 doubt can be described only as character inscriptions ixo.Qo.y.xr\Qe<;) and pre- 

 sumably a couple of Indian pictographs, to which perhaps Tiverton and the 

 now missing Tool-AVhittier belong. Unfortunately, the material handed to me 

 gives me no opportunity of judging of the genuineness of these inscriptions, 

 for instance the interesting ones on the small amulets (?) from Grave Creek 

 and Braxton. Without personal examination and knowledge of the localities 

 it is diflScult for me to say whether or not some may be signatures, as for in- 

 stance Byfield 1. 



After examining the various inscriptions I should say it is extremely doubtful 

 if they can be connected in any way with the Scandinavian (or Greenlandic) 

 runic inscriptions. 



To this I would add that while the inscriptions seem to have nothing 

 whatever to do with Scandinavian runes and thus from this angle 

 must be considered worthless, these American phenomena may yet 

 be of certain interest, regarded as Indian pictographs. Indeed, one 

 or two (Byfield) may perhaps be explained as European signatures 

 of Colonial times. It may be worth while starting a systematic modern 

 photographic recording of this material by the methods created by 

 Moltke himself. 



SITES AND MOORING STONES 



I had the opportunity of seeing the following sites : 



North Salem, N. H. — Some partly underground stone structures. 

 They have nothing whatever to do with the Scandinavian Viking age 

 or medieval times. (See H. Hencken in the New England Quarterly, 

 September 1939, and Will B. Goodwin, Tlie Kuins of Great Ireland 

 in New England, Boston, 1946.) 



Marthas Vineyard, Mass. — A dolmenlike stone chamber. Doubt- 

 ful as a grave. It might merely be some sort of play building of 

 post-Colonial times. 



Stony CreeTc, near Guilford, Conn. — Two sculptured stones (orna- 

 ments: scales, indentations, quadrifoil) ; a rock with sculpture (like 

 a profiled base) and drilled holes; some house ruins, etc. These 

 objects cannot now with any certainty be dated to pre-Columbian times. 

 An excavation may possibly give some information. (Refer to Dr. 

 Bert G. Anderson, assistant professor of surgery, Yale University, the 

 discoverer of the site.) 



Mooring stones. — A mooring stone is a boulder on the shore of a 

 fiord or lake into which is drilled a hole for a bolt holding a ring to 

 tie a boat. This mooring method is an ancient one in Scandinavia 

 and Hjalmar Holand regards some of these mooring holes, namely, 

 such as those discovered in Minnesota, as having been made by Norse- 

 men in pre-Columbian days. ( See his books. Westward from Vinland, 

 p. 198 et seq., 1942, and America : 1355-1364, p. 135 et seq., 1946, and 

 his article in Aarbf^ger for Nordisk Oldkyndighcd og Historie, 1951, p. 



