Was this an Iron Furnace?
Yes, it was. Welcome to archaeological mystery! The author is William D. Conner, avocational archaeologist of Columbus, Ohio. My archaeological odyssey begins August, 1963, as I pose (middle) with amateur archaeologist Arlington H. Mallery, and a neighborhood youngster. We sit in the remains of the bowl of the Overly furnace near the village of Austin, Ross County, Ohio. This furnace and others like it in South Central Ohio, excavated 1949-1992 by amateur investigators, represent an Old World technology 2,000 years old. How did it come to exist in Ohio?
Iron Age America before Columbus
Preface: The Legendary Azgens
1. Norsemen Among The Indians?
2. Spruce Hill
3. Mallery Finds Norse Traces In Newfoundland
4. Spruce Hill Furnaces Lure Mallery To Ohio
5. Mallery vs. Solecki
6. Are Virginia’s Mysterious Furnaces All Gone?
7. Investigators Keeler and Kelley
8. Glacial Kame Furnace Uncovered, July 1990
9. Archaeologist Urges Us To Dig
10. The Hoover Reservoir Site Furnace
11. America’s Large Copper Artifacts
12. Investigator Ellis Neiburger
13. New Light Shed On Furnaces And Maps
14. Used By Columbus?
15. Proof Of Ancient Astronauts?
16. The Newark ‘Holy Stones’ Debate At Roscoe
17. The Bent Artifacts
18. The Farfarers
19. Period Of Unrest’ Caused By Invasion Of Iron Age Celts
20. America and Ohio: Just Before Columbus?
21. Forging Links With Pre-Columbians
Appendix A: Arlington Mallery’s Investigation Chronology
Appendix B: Ohio Archaeo-Pyrogenic Sites Database
Appendix C: The Solecki Report
Appendix D: Rebuttal To Solecki’s Report By Mallery
Appendix E: Supplement To Mallery’s Rebuttal
Appendix F: Sterling’s Reply To Mallery’s Rebuttal Of Solecki’s Report
Appendix G: Spruce Hill Investigations, 1992
Appendix H: Report To The Ohio Archaeological Council
Appendix I: Triangulation: Recording Excavation Site Data Points
Appendix J: Arledge TL Test Yields 1740 AD Results
Appendix K: Mallery Not The First
Appendix L: The Georgetown Forum
Appendix M: The Legendary Lost City Of Paint Valley
Appendix N: Carved Stone Buried 15 feet Below Chillicothe?
Appendix O: Found With Metal Detector
Appendix P: Was Ohio Prehistoric Furnace Iron
Appendix Q: Reported At Symposium In 1973
Appendix R: The Thordsen Map
Iron Age America before Columbus / William D. Conner
‘Crushing’ Evidence of Antiquity
Centuries before history began, someone left behind furnaces of ancient Old World Iron Age design buried deep inside “Indian mounds,” hillsides and the banks of creeks in and around the land that would become Ross County, Ohio. Prehistoric Iron Age people from the Old World built the furnaces to smelt bog iron ore into wrought iron, the metal blacksmiths shaped into tools and weapons. I will provide conclusive proof that all attempts to fit Ohio’s pit iron furnaces into the 18th century -- before American settlers claimed the land -- are unworkable. Instead, evidence indicates that these furnaces were constructed and used about a thousand years ago.
I was a teenage boy at Chillicothe High in Ross County when first I met Arlington H. Mallery in 1949. Scorned by professional archaeologists, Mallery, a bridge-building engineer, knew Iron Age furnaces when he found them, even if they occurred in Ohio, where they were not supposed to exist. He dug up several furnaces of ancient design along Ross County’s Deer Creek in 1949-50.
I have developed compelling evidence these furnaces are in fact prehistoric and this new evidence will be uncovered in my new book, Iron Age America Before Columbus.
Text and photos © 1997-2009 by William D. Conner
“Iron Age America before Columbus” is now Available!
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