Barry Fell

Barry Fell (born Howard Barraclough Fell on June 6, 1917 in Lewes, Sussex, England; died on April 21, 1994, of heart failure in San Diego, California) was a professor of invertebrate zoology at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. His primary research was on starfish and sea urchins; however, Fell is also widely known for his controversial work in New World epigraphy.

Biography

Fell moved to New Zealand with his mother in the early 1920s, after his father, who was a merchant seaman, died in a shipboard fire. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh in 1941, after which he served in the British Army during World War II. In 1946 he returned to New Zealand where he resumed his academic career. In 1964 he joined the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, where he stayed until retirement in 1979.

Epigraphy

Though Fell was an accomplished marine biologist at Harvard University, he is best known for his work on epigraphy. This interest began early in his career with a study of Polynesian petroglyphs published in 1940. His most famous work came much later, starting in 1976 with the publication of the book "America BC", in which he proposed translations of alleged inscriptions found on rock surfaces and artifacts in North and South America that he believed to be written in Old World scripts and languages. He followed up this work in 1980 with "Saga America" and in 1982 with "Bronze Age America". Fell's work led to the establishment of several amateur epigraphic associations such as the "Epigraphic Society" and the "Midwestern Epigraphic Society".Fact|date=April 2008

One example of Fell's claims is his contention that Irish monks reached North America centuries before Columbus. This is based on Fell's translation, published in the magazine "Wonderful West Virginia" in 1983, of two rock-cut inscriptions located at archaeological sites in Wyoming County, West Virginia. [Barry Fell, "Christian Messages in Old Irish Script Deciphered from Rock Carvings in W. Va.", Wonderful West Virginia 47 (1) :12-19, 1983, http://cwva.org/wwvrunes/wwvrunes_3.html] According to Fell, these inscriptions narrate the story of Christ's nativity and are written in an old Irish script called Celtic Ogham (also referred to as Ogam) dating back to the 6th or 8th century AD. [Barry Fell, "Christian Messages in Old Irish Script Deciphered from Rock Carvings in W. Va.", Wonderful West Virginia 47 (1) :12-19, 1983, http://cwva.org/wwvrunes/wwvrunes_3.html] This led to the publication of various articles in the journal "The West Virginia Archeologist" highly critical of Fell's conclusions and methodology, including a 1983 article by archaeologist and historian W. Hunter Lesser describing Fell's claims as pseudoscientific and unreliable, [W. Hunter Lesser, "Cult Archaeology Strikes Again: A Case for Pre-Columbian Irishmen in the Mountain State?", The West Virginia Archeologist Volume 35, Number 2, 1983, http://cwva.org/ogam_rebutal/lesser_cult_arch.html] and a 1989 article by lawyers Monroe Oppenheimer and Willard Wirtz that relies on the opinions of academic archaeologists and linguists to dispute that the inscription is written in Ogam script, and which accuses Fell of deliberate fraud. [Monroe Oppenheimer and Willard Wirtz, "A Linguistic Analysis of Some West Virginia Petroglyphs", The West Virginia Archeologist Volume 41, Number 1, Spring 1989, http://cwva.org/ogam_rebutal/wirtz.html]

Fell's epigraphic work has not been well-received in academia. [Stephen Williams (1991) "Fantastic Archaeology", Phila.: University of Pennsylvania Press, ISBN 0-8122-8238-8, p.264-273.] [Kenneth L. Feder (1996) "Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology", Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Co., ISBN 1-55934-523-3, pp. 101-107.] Critics of Fell's work have routinely dismissed him as an amateur, pointing out his lack of formal training in ancient scripts and languages. [Such statements were made in several articles published by "The West Virginia Archaeologist"] Criticism of Fell is not limited to academia, as some of Fell's critics themselves lack professional backgrounds in archaeology or linguistics, such as Oppenheimer and Wirtz. [Monroe Oppenheimer and Willard Wirtz, "A Linguistic Analysis of Some West Virginia Petroglyphs", The West Virginia Archeologist Volume 41, Number 1, Spring 1989, http://cwva.org/ogam_rebutal/wirtz.html]

Critics of Dr. Fell have pointed out that he seemed to jump to conclusions, and "to translate ancient languages to English with apparent ease" that was not typical of a critical analysis.Fact|date=April 2008

Richard D. Flavin wrote that:

"Fell often worked from material mailed to him, which he reacted to (read: "deciphered") without checking further. This seems to be a general complaint regarding his epigraphic work. He was an accomplished scholastic, well published, who knew the rigors of academic argument and presentation, yet with his epigraphic work Fell seldom stepped away from his desk to research an item or view it in person. Such pervasive carelessness (or, as some say, arrogance) marred his efforts and induced a negative reaction in most professionals. Which is unfortunate, as he had some interesting ideas. [Richard D. Flavin, "Straight Lines: Selected Reviews", self-published paper, 2004, originally at flavinscorner.com, now at : http://web.archive.org/web/20041015002435/www.flavinscorner.com/reviews.htm]

David Kelley, an archaeologist at the University of Calgary who is credited with a major breakthrough in the decipherment of Mayan glyphs, complained about Fell in a 1990 essay: "Fell's work [contains] major academic sins, the three worst being distortion of data, inadequate acknowledgment of predecessors, and lack of presentation of alternative views." [D. H. Kelley, "Proto-Tifinagh and Proto-Ogham in the Americas:Review of Fell; Fell and Farley; Fell and Reinert; Johannessen, et al.; McGlone and Leonard; Totten", The Review of Archaeology, Spring 1990, http://www.reviewofarchaeology.com/pastissues.html]

In the same essay, however, Kelley went on to acknowledge that, "I have no personal doubts that some of the inscriptions which have been reported [by Fell] are genuine Celtic ogham." [D. H. Kelley, "Proto-Tifinagh and Proto-Ogham in the Americas:Review of Fell; Fell and Farley; Fell and Reinert; Johannessen, et al.; McGlone and Leonard; Totten", The Review of Archaeology, Spring 1990, http://www.reviewofarchaeology.com/pastissues.html] Kelley concluded: "Despite my occasional harsh criticism of Fell's treatment of individual inscriptions, it should be recognized that without Fell's work there would be no [North American] ogham problem to perplex us. We need to ask not only what Fell has done wrong in his epigraphy, but also where we have gone wrong as archaeologists in not recognizing such an extensive European presence in the New World." [D. H. Kelley, "Proto-Tifinagh and Proto-Ogham in the Americas:Review of Fell; Fell and Farley; Fell and Reinert; Johannessen, et al.; McGlone and Leonard; Totten", The Review of Archaeology, Spring 1990, http://www.reviewofarchaeology.com/pastissues.html]

See also

* America's Stonehenge
* Bourne stone
* Institute for the Study of American Cultures
* Los Lunas Decalogue Stone
* Mi'kmaq hieroglyphic writing
* Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact
* Pseudoarchaeology
* Turkey Mountain inscriptions

References

External links

* [http://www.rsnz.govt.nz/directory/yearbooks/ybook96/8.html Royal Society of New Zealand biography of Fell, including full list of publications]
* [http://www.ydli.org/dakinfo/celticp.htm "Is Carrier Celtic?" - Yinka Déné Language Institute article critical of Fell's ideas]
* [http://www.epigraphy.org/ Epigraphic Society website]
* [http://midwesternepigraphic.org/ Midwestern Epigraphic Society website]
* [http://www.neara.org/ New England Antiquities Research Association website]
* [http://www.equinox-project.com/drfell.htm Equinox Project page in honor of Fell]