A Study In Stone
The Upton Chamber is one of the largest and most perfectly built of the more than 300 stone chambers catalogued throughout the Northeast. It is one of several similar structures in New England that are sometimes attributed to pre-Columbian European monks. It features a six foot high, fourteen foot long tunnel leading into a hillside, to a bee-hive like domed chamber of small quarried stones measuring 12 feet in diameter and 11 feet high. The chamber is topped with several large oval stones weighing several tons each.
The exact age and origin of the Upton Chamber has been the subject of debate for years. Some experts have suggested that the chamber may have been constructed around 710 A.D. This theory is partially based upon the orientation of the access passage. The access passage is aligned to stone cairns found on nearby Pratt Hill, and also aligned such that the internal chamber is illuminated at the summer solstice.
J.W. Mavor, Jr., and B.E. Dix carefully measured and studied this chamber over a period of years. They give three reasons for asserting that it was really built by Europeans around 700 AD -- long before the Norse set foot on North America.
- The sophisticated corbelling of the structure closely follows that seen in Irish and Iberic chambers, such as New Grange.
- The long passageway is aligned with the summer solstice sunset, also a feature of some ancient European structures, but hardly of any concern to a New England farmer.
- The Upton chamber seems to be associated with linear arrays of stones and stone cairns on nearby Pratt
Hill. These alignments have obvious astronomical significance. In fact, based upon changes in the setting
positions of several stars (due to precession), Mavor and Dix believe the whole complex dates back to 700-750 AD.
They conclude:
"Of all the enigmatic structures that we have seen in America, the Upton chamber stands out as one that could have been built under the influence of Irish monks in the 8th century."
(Mavor, James W., Jr., and Dix, Byron E.; "Earth, Stones. and Sky: Universality and Continuity in American Cosmology," NEARA Journal, 29:91, 1995. NEARA = New England Antiquities Research Association)
