Mysterious Artifacts – Basalt and granite bricks

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Written by Richard L. Thornton

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner

I am finding the ruins of very old rectangular houses on the crests and natural terraces of mountains, near my house on the eastern end of the Nacoochee Valley, northward to Batesville, GA . . . which were constructed out of quarried, basalt or granite bricks. They are the same dimensions as fired, ceramic bricks from the Colonial Era. 

This is NOT a typical Anglo-American building tradition. Have any of you out there seen historic houses in other areas of the United States or another nation, built out of stone bricks? 

7 Comments

  1. Richard – I have one found within past year and also found it unusual for Savannah as I’ve seen just about every time of brick or mortar around Coastal areas. Has a pumice like look and texture. I found mine inside of fresh cemetery dirt taken up when digging a new grave not far from a certain golf course that I know you’re familiar with. I’ll email you a photo.

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    1. We have pumice here in the NW corner of Habersham County, because there are numerous volcanic cones. I can’t imagine anyone hauling rocks down to Savannah for the NE tip of Georgia. The pumice probably was ballast on a sailing ship that originated at one of the volcanic islands in the Caribbean Sea.

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    1. Where do you live in New England? By chance, did any Portuguese settle there? What confounds me is that when the British and German settlers arrived in the 1820s. they all built log houses. I formerly lived in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The areas of the Valley where I lived was first settled in the 1730s. There are some houses built out of limestone fieldstones and rubble, but there was no masonry even worked as much as ashlar.

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      1. No Portuguese that I know of. My property actually has an archeological site on it. I’m seeking an archeologist for proper evaluation. NEARA is interested based on photos, but hadn’t been able to make it happen yet. There is and was a strong Abenaki presence here, but the local tribal leaders say that the petroglyphs and other artifacts I’ve found are not theirs. Irish monks? Maybe. Vikings? Some of that without question. The pics I’ve found online of some things very similar to what I’ve discovered here don’t make sense in terms of geography and what is currently known about the movements of the ancients.

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