The Braxton County Rune Stone—also known as the Wilson Stone and Braxton County Tablet—was found by Blaine Wilson on April 10, 1931, about eight miles west of Gassaway.
The piece of sandstone—measuring about a square foot—has inscriptions similar to a stone found in the Grave Creek Mound in Moundsville in 1838. Nearly a century earlier, the Grave Creek Tablet had become the center of an archaeological controversy, with one eminent ethnographer believing it had been carved by Celts from ancient Spain or Britain, rather than by early Indians.
The inscriptions on both stones feature three horizontal lines dividing three sets of similar characters, with a cross-like symbol at the bottom. The state purchased the Braxton County Rune Stone in 1940 and sent it to an archaeologist at the University of Michigan, who concluded that it was, in all likelihood, a fraud.
Today, most archaeologists consider both the Braxton County and Grave Creek tablets to be frauds. The Braxton County Rune Stone is on display in the West Virginia State Museum. The location of the original Grave Creek Tablet is unknown.
Archeologist Delf Norona died in Moundsville on April 12, 1974, just before his 79th birthday. Born in Hong Kong, Norona spent much of his early life in the Philippine Islands.
A British subject, he emigrated to Canada and then to the United States, where he served in the U.S. Army during World War I. In 1930, he moved to West Virginia.
Norona is remembered for his important contributions to West Virginia history and archaeology, particularly relating to the Grave Creek Mound in Marshall County. He helped found the West Virginia Archaeological Society in 1949 and played a key role in building the Mound Museum at Moundsville in 1952. He served as the museum’s curator until the day of his death.
Norona was the first recipient of the Sigfus Olafson Award for his outstanding contributions to West Virginia archeology. He wrote numerous articles for the West Virginia History and West Virginia Archeologist journals, and was president of the West Virginia Historical Society and secretary of the American Philatelic Society. The modern museum at Grave Creek Mound in Moundsville is named in Delf Norona’s honor.
Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex in Moundsville is presenting several programs next month, all free and open to the public.
Grave Creek also has two new permanent exhibits. Prehistoric West Virginia features casts of some large Ice Age animals that were once in West Virginia, including skulls of the saber-tooth cat and dire wolf. The dire wolf serves as a pet and protector to many of the characters on the television series “Game of Thrones.”
The Buried Past: Artifacts from West Virginia’s Wild, Wonderful History showcases archaeological sites and a wide range of people, places and time.
Grave Creek ranks as one of the largest earthen mortuary mounds anywhere in the world.
Scattered across the state, often just under the surface veneer of West Virginia, buried evidence exists of communities and times gone by. Nowhere is that more obvious than in Moundsville at the Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex. The curators there work daily next to a giant Adena Indian burial mound, preserving artifacts found over the years throughout the state.
The Mound in Moundsville
If you drive into Moundsville, across from what looks like a giant castle that is the former state penitentiary, there’s this swollen grassy mound. It kind of looks like a giant land turtle with a couple of big trees and flat, stone stairs winding up its back. The mound stands almost as tall as a 6-story building and from the top you can see for miles. It’s one of the largest conical mounds in the United States.
“The mound was built over 2000 years ago,” said Andrea Keller, the Cultural Program Coordinator at the Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex. “Roughly 250 – 150 BC by people that archeologists call the Adena people. They are prehistoric native Americans.”
Keller gives tours, among other things, where she tells visitors all we know about this mound. Which …is surprisingly little.
“We do know it was used as a burial mound,” she said, “It had two main tombs, one with one individual and one with two individuals – two rather elaborate tombs for just three people.”
Keller explains how the family that owned the mound in 1838 decided to excavate it with the business idea of creating a museum with the artifacts they’d find – one you paid to go through.
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
gaming stones from Fayette County ~1500 AD
“They were going to charge 25 cents for an adult and half of that for a child,” Keller said. “So with high hopes they excavated from the base, and when they got towards the center, they found that first main tomb with the two individuals.”
She says they would have found a hollowed-out tomb, rotting logs, two skeletons, shell beads, maybe some ornaments…
“And not a whole lot else. They were probably kind of disappointed.”
Keller says they “would” have found these things, but the truth is… we really don’t know for certain what they found 177 years ago. Much of what was excavated has been lost over the years. Including the skeletons.
History of the property:
250-150 B.C. Construction of the mound took place in successive stages.
1838 The first recorded excavation of the mound took place.
1909 The state of West Virginia bought the mound in the early 1900s (with some help from area school children).
1978 The Delf Norona Museum was constructed next to the mound. This large, modern brick building with pyramid-shaped skylights is meant to be an architectural tribute to prehistoric times.
2007 Construction of the archaeological complex began.
Modern Archeology
The archiving skills of the time were less sophisticated than they are today. No one understands that better than Amanda Brooks and Heather Cline, curators at Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex.
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
turtle shell cups (circa 1480s), found in Fayette County
“The majority of our artifacts that we’ve rehoused are all stored up in this area,” says lead curator, Heather Cline as she stands in a 9,600 square foot addition to the museum. The archeological complex was designed to house West Virginia’s artifacts. All of them.
“We have movable shelving units, climate controlled, humidity controlled, temperature is also regulated.”
This is the archaeological curation facility for the whole state of West Virginia. Cline explains that modern archeology isn’t all tomb-raiding and dodging ancient booby-traps.
“In archeology,” Cline explains, “10 percent of the work is done in the field, 90 percent is in the lab.”
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Heather Cline (middle) and Amanda Brooks (right) work daily in a lab to preserve and study artifacts found in West Virginia – huge collections of artifacts excavated from sites throughout the state. Many sites, both historic and prehistoric, were excavated in the 60s and 70s and have been moved around the state over the years. But in the 1990s the state’s legislators decided to build a more permanent and dedicated home for the state’s artifacts. In 2007 they broke ground.
The Lab
In the archeology lab, Cline hovers over a desk with trays of objects.
“I’m laying out some artifacts from a Confederate Civil War camp, excavating in 1963, by Clifford Lewis along with youth science campers. They excavated parts of camp in Pocahontas County which remains pretty untouched from 1861 when it was built there.”
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
elk horn tool (circa 1500) found in Fayette County
Buckles, spoons, knives, buttons – Cline carefully is going through what was collected in the 60s, categorizing and entering each object into a database. She says historic artifacts are most interesting to her, but there are interesting prehistoric artifacts, too.
Bird bone flutes, ceramic gaming stones, porcupine quill needles, musical instruments made out of rib bones, elk horn tools – many of these artifacts came from the prehistoric Mount Carbon village site from Fayette County. Last year Cline and Brooks cataloged 43,000 artifacts from the site – most of which date back to the late 1400s – early 1500s.
Rehousing History
“We spend the majority of our time rehousing old collections,” Cline said. “We’re rehousing 2000 boxes. It’s a slow process getting everything up to archival standards so that they’ll be around for researchers.”
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
fossil-tool found in Fayette County
“Rehousing” is when experts like Cline take excavated artifacts out of their original paper bags and place them into standard, acid-free boxes and plastic bags that will better preserve them for researchers in the future.
Last year Cline and Brooks cataloged 43,000 artifacts from the site – most of which date back to the late 1400s, early 1500s. The entire site was packed into 100 boxes that it took the two curators about a year to rehouse. There are hundreds and hundreds (more than 1,500) more to rehouse. But Cline isn’t daunted, even though she knows she won’t see all of the artifacts rehoused in her lifetime. She takes it one box at a time. And as an archeologist, she has an acute sense of curiosity and wonder.
“It’s like Christmas, you never know what you’re going to get! You just never know what you’re going to get.”
