Ancient New England?

Secrets of Mysterious Stone Chambers

The Eagle Chamber, South Royalton, Vermont. Photo by Mike Luoma.

By riverbanks. On mountainsides. In swamps. Facing the rising sun on the Winter Solstice, or aligned with the cardinal points of the compass, or the Equinox, or perhaps even the setting of the Pleiades… There are mysterious stone workings all over New England and upstate New York. And there are nearly as many origin theories for them as there are enigmatic stone chambers.

Inside of Eagle Chamber. Much of the wall to the right and the floor are bedrock. There is a vent or smoke-hole in the rear upper right. Photo by Mike Luoma.

How old are they? Who built them? Why?

The Upton Chamber, Upton Heritage Park, Upton, Massachusetts. Photo by Mike Luoma.

Mainstream archaeology says, “Calm down, those are root cellars and ice houses from colonial times.” There are also robust contingents of true believers in pre-Columbian European origins, who credit early Celtic, Viking, Roman or other travelers with the construction. And there are a growing number of researchers who theorize these could be Native American, or even proto-Native American, ritual spaces.

There’s a lot to take in when researching these stone chambers. Some who hold differing viewpoints are surprisingly strident in…