What is the Bat Creek stone?

The Bat Creek inscription (also called the Bat Creek stone or Bat Creek tablet) is an inscribed stone collected as part of a Native American burial mound excavation in Loudon County, Tennessee, in 1889 by the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology’s Mound Survey, directed by entomologist Cyrus Thomas.

Where is the Bat Creek stone?

the University of Tennessee
The Bat Creek Stone is currently on display at the McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee. It is on loan from the Smithsonian, who financed the original excavations of the Bat Creek Mounds, a few miles west of present-day Vonore, Tennessee.

How old is the Bat Creek stone?

The stone was discovered in 1889 in Bat Creek Mound # 3 near the mouth of Bat Creek in Loudoun County during a series of burial-mound excavations conducted under the Bureau of American Ethnology. The stone was located beneath the skeletal head of one of the nine skeletons in the undisturbed mound.

Where did the Bat Creek Stone come from?

The Bat Creek Stone was professionally excavated in 1889 from an undisturbed burial mound in Eastern Tennessee by the Smithsonian’s Mound Survey project. The director of the project, Cyrus Thomas, initially declared that the curious inscription on the stone were “beyond question letters of the Cherokee alphabet.” (Thomas 1894: 391:4)

Is the inscription on Bat Creek a hoax?

The inscriptions were initially described as Cherokee, but in 2004, similarities to an inscription that was circulating in a Freemason book were discovered. Hoax expert Kenneth Feder says the peer reviewed work of Mary L. Kwas and Robert Mainfort has “demolished” any claims of the stone’s authenticity.

Who was the archaeologist who discovered Bat Creek?

In the 1880s, the Smithsonian Institution team led by John W. Emmert conducted several excavations in the lower Little Tennessee valley, uncovering artifacts and burials related to the valley’s 18th-century Overhill Cherokee inhabitants and prehistoric inhabitants.

How big was the mound at Bat Creek?

The Bat Creek site, Smithsonian trinomial designation 40LD24, is a multiphase site with evidence of occupation as early as the Archaic period. According to Emmert, the site consisted of one large mound (Mound 1) on the east bank of the creek and two smaller mounds (Mound 2 and Mound 3) on the west bank.