The Narragansett Runestone, also known as the Quidnessett Rock, is a slab of metasandstone located in

Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly fewer than 1.1 million residents as of 2020, but it ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. It is inscribed with two rows of symbols, which some have indicated resemble ancient

runic Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...

characters. The stone was stolen in 2012. On April 26, 2013, the Rhode Island Attorney General announced that the rock was recovered after an individual came forward with information. The rock was moved to the

University of Rhode Island The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is the flagship public research as well as the land-grant university of the state of Rhode Isla ...

School of Oceanography for testing, but the tests were not carried out because it would have required damaging the stone. In January 2014, plans were announced to move the runestone to

Goddard Memorial State Park Goddard Memorial State Park is a public recreation area occupying along the shores of Greenwich Cove and Greenwich Bay in Warwick, Rhode Island. The state park grounds were once the estate of Civil War officer and Rhode Island politician Rober ...

in East Greenwich. In October 2015, the runestone was placed for long-term public viewing in Wickford, a village of

North Kingstown, Rhode Island North Kingstown is a town in Washington County, Rhode Island, United States, and is part of the Providence metropolitan area. The population was 27,732 in the 2020 census. North Kingstown is home to the birthplace of American portraitist Gilbe ...

Provenance

The Narragansett runestone was first reported to the

Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission The Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission, often called RIHPHC, is an agency run by the state of Rhode Island that aims to preserve the state's history and heritage. The commission works statewide to protect and upkeep histo ...

(HPHC) in the 1980s. The New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA) ran several studies and published a number of papers about the rock in the 1980s and 1990s. According to NEARA, the stone was discovered by a

quahog The hard clam (''Mercenaria mercenaria''), also known as the round clam, hard-shell (or hard-shelled) clam, or the quahog, is an edible marine bivalve mollusk that is native to the eastern shores of North America and Central America from Prince E ...

ger in December 1984 while digging in the mud flats of

Narragansett Bay Narragansett Bay is a bay and estuary on the north side of Rhode Island Sound covering , of which is in Rhode Island. The bay forms New England's largest estuary, which functions as an expansive natural harbor and includes a small archipelago. Sm ...

. The HPHC was unable to find any information about the stone in any previous inventories of Narragansett Bay. They found that as early as 1939, the runestone was located upland and may have been buried. Recently, the inscriptions on the stone were visible only for a short period of time between the shifting tides, due to dramatic erosion of the shoreline at Pojac Point and the fact that the stone was positioned only from the extreme low tide mark. In 2014, Everett Brown of Providence reported that he and his brother Warren had carved the runes on Quidnessett Rock in the summer of 1964. He said that he had forgotten about the incident until the stone was removed and recovered in 2013. His account has been disputed by other local people, who state that they saw the stone before 1964, and have challenged other elements of his statements.

Media

The stone is referenced in episode 11 of

season 1 Season One may refer to: Albums * ''Season One'' (Suburban Legends album), 2004 * ''Season One'' (All Sons & Daughters album), 2012 * ''Season One'' (Saukrates album), 2012 See also * * * Season 2 (disambiguation) * Season 4 (disambiguati ...

of ''

America Unearthed ''America Unearthed'' was an American entertainment Television program#Seasons.2Fseries, television series, the first original series to air on the A&E Networks channel H2 (A&E Networks), H2. The show premiered on December 21, 2012, and was produ ...

''.

Disappearance and recovery

The state Coastal Resources Management Council reported that the runestone had been removed from the tidal waters off Pojac Point between July and August 2012. In May 2013, the state Attorney General’s Environmental Unit and DEM’s Criminal Investigation Unit announced that they had recovered the stone. Town historian and independent columnist G. Timothy Cranston said that a Pojac Point resident had removed the stone, as he was tired of having tourists scouring the neighborhood and shoreline looking for the stone. He said that the resident, who was not named, was ordered by state officials to retrieve the stone after having sunk it in deeper waters off the coast. After the stone was recovered, in October 2015 it was placed for long-term public viewing in Wickford, a village of the Town of North Kingstown, Rhode Island.

References

{{Coord, 41, 34, 12.1, N, 71, 27, 8.2, W, display=title 1939 archaeological discoveries 20th-century inscriptions Rhode Island folklore Inscriptions of disputed origin Narragansett Bay North American runestone hoaxes Pseudoarchaeology Rhode Island culture