Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
The authors of this paper were invited to attend a conference on ‘Ancient Vermont’ held at Castleton in Vermont in October 1977, and to examine and comment upon the ‘evidence’ for the extensive occupation of New England by Celts and others in the first or second millennium BC as propounded by Professor L. B. Fell of Harvard University. The ‘evidence’ consists broadly of supposed ‘Ogam’ and ‘proto-Ogam’ inscriptions on rocks and stones and megalithic stone structures, some of the structures appearing to have specific orientation in association with standing stones which, it has been suggested, indicates possible solar observatories. The nature of some of the evidence was examined by the authors both in the field and in an exhibition as well as by way of papers delivered at the conference. The conclusions reached were negative concerning any material evidence of a Celtic presence but do not, of course, preclude the possibility that Celts reached the New World in remote antiquity, nor deny that there are numerous anomalous features in the New England landscape which need to be carefully documented, explored and analysed.