Spruce Swamp Brook - Linear stone mounds along a brook in Shirley

Let me now get to the meat of what was interesting on my walk at the Holden Rd Conservation Land in Shirley. A few steps after finding that first pile, I thought I saw a stone wall off to the side of the trail and went to have a look. The "wall" turned out to be some exposed rock in an artificial berm about 40 feet long with a conical mound at one end.
I took pictures as best I could in the bright light.

After a while, I noticed some auxiliary piles and little notched dimple made from larger rocks on the far side of the mound. Something like this (birds-eye and profile):

Here is a picture looking down the berm towards the mound. In the foreground is a smaller pile with a bit of quartz:

 

 Here we are looking from the other end, towards the mound:

The "notch" is behind the tree. Here is a better picture, with the berm now visible off the the right:

Finally, here is the back side of the berm. You can see it is a big structure.

The auxiliary piles were hard to photograph. Here is one that is almost part of the berm:

 

And another:

 

So I contented myself with the flowers:

 closer:

 One more auxiliary:

After seeing this unusual linear "mound" I continued along the same ridge of land, and a few feet later it became a composite of trenches, hollows, and piles...until I got to the mound next to the wall I wrote about yesterday. Essentially, as soon as you step into the woods on that conservation land trail, there is a non-stop site to your right. 
After that I walked west, saw other structures [I'll tell you about later], and circled south and back east till I got back to the brook-maybe 1/4 mile south of where I was before. Here there were even more substantial man-made berms along the side of the brook. Were they just from field clearing? These are big tiers in two levels above the brook:

Seen from above, the berm rises above the level of the ground level:

 Actually, a couple of separate berms in one place:

So that is it. These linear structures are not so common and a bit peculiar. I hesitate to compare them to other things but field clearing does not create structure above the level of the ground like this. Reminds me a bit of Blood Hill. The strategy of following the Devens stone wall map, the strategy of trying to squeeze some ceremonial sites out of that sandy region along the Nashua River - payed off. And it is telling me I should go look at Benjamin Hill next.

Fort Devens Stone Wall Map - online

A second look at Spruce Swamp Brook in Shirley. Hunting for sites using the Devens stone wall map

I went for a great walk in Shirley. Now let me tell you, Shirley is one of those towns in the Nashua River valley, like Lancaster, Lunenburg,and Fort Devens, where there are not may rocks and where I never found much in the way of interesting features. It bothers me that there is a big swath of countryside between here and the hills of Leominster where there are no good areas to explore. Yet people lived there and probably did not walk to the nearest rocky town for their ceremonies. So there must be something in to be found.

The stone wall map from Fort Devens offers hints. It shows where there are stone walls, and where there are walls -obviously- there are rocks. Some places the walls look quite strange. Using this map I looked for places where walls go crazy and where it was also conservation land. So I settled on a place in Shirley, near a hill I found sites on before. 

And it was good almost as soon as I stepped into the woods. Here is a bit of that map:

Right above "A" is Holden Road, running diagonally. There is a conservation land entrance and you walk south about 100 yards to get to"A"- where there was a first rock pile (see Monday's post). See the small knoll directly south of A?(click in on the map to magnify). That is a big rock pile, not a natural feature. 

Just for fun, a stone wall is shown on the map, running past the southern end of the knoll. Here is that spot, with the wall to the left and the rock pile (and other piles) to the right.

Here is the back side of the same wall:

In this second view, we look back at one mound touching the wall and another beyond it.

The whole area is full of loose, messy piles which did not photo well. 

So that is the background for exploring at A, B, and C. Actually the best stuff was before seeing this knoll. And later, at D, where another mistake occurs on the map: it is not a stone wall but a linear mound. More to follow.

A Little Underwater Comparison

Yes I did post some photos about an underwater site, perhaps from a "less than reliable" sort of website.

Below is a photo from a more trusted source showing some boulders that don't look quite as "fresh" as the cobbles in the "pristine" site with the "anonymous discoverer," who I suspect might just as well be called the "anonymous hoaxster builder."  

Divers examining boulders at the bottom of Lake Huron that served as caribou drive lanes for prehistoric hunters.

 Photo courtesy of Tane Casserly { http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/12/2011/lake-huron-reveals-a-prehistoric-past }

What's the obvious difference?

"You decide," as they say.

(And I've posted this link before: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/25/10120.full - just in case you want to compare it to almost anything found here: http://www.midwesternepigraphic.org/pubs.html )

I'd also be willing to wager $1 that the "anonymous discoverer" has a bumper sticker or magnetic ribbon on his/her car that looks much like this:

Mostly broken stuff

This past weekend I went out and spent some time looking for arrowheads. I worked pretty hard at it but came up with nothing. I can't complain, though, because I had some pretty good luck in a couple of places the previous weekend, May 10-12. We had had some really heavy rains, I couldn't wait to get out to look because I knew I would find at least something. Not a lot of quality artifacts, but it might have been my weekend record in terms of quantity if you count all the broken tools I found. Here is a picture of the total finds for that weekend, Friday through Sunday.

There are broken arrowheads, fragments of arrowheads, a couple of scrapers, a broken scraper, and a few mostly whole arrowheads. Incredibly, most of that stuff was found in two hours on Friday after work. This picture shows just the Friday finds.

All quartz. That big thing on the left is a scraper (I think), crude but whole. Number 4 in the second row is nicely made and it is a shame it is broken. There are three (relatively) whole arrowheads: a big chunky triangle showing a lot of wear, a super thin point probably reworked down from something else, and a tiny triangle, with flaking on one side only, carefully chipped from a quartz flake.

Saturday morning I got out there again and found a few more crude or broken pieces. The one in the middle below is a hafted scraper, it is made that way and has a stem like an arrowhead, pretty neat. That red rhyolite arrowhead is broken and was not well made but the material is pretty.

Sunday Dave and I went to a different place. I spotted this after less than five minutes. It's right in a vehicle track as you can see. When I spotted it I assumed it would be broken.

But, it wasn't. I think the material is felsite. My best find in a while, I was really excited by this one.

Dave and I searched there for hours but came up with very little. Dave found a broken base of a huge quartz triangle, it would have been massive. A little while later I found a very similar base! I don't have any other points of this shape and size, even broken ones like this. The one Dave found is the top one in this picture.

It's raining again as I write this. Somewhere out there in the dark, stone tools wait to be picked up.

Cosmic event ended the ice age

[Not rock pile related] The latest about the disappearance of the mammoths. [Here]

Underwater Rock Piles

I just happened across this:
http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2013/05/underwater-copper-culture-site.html

[PWAX here: hey everybody, go look at that link]

First look at Spruce Swamp Brook - Shirley

I went into the woods on the trail into the Holden Rd Conservation Land. There was sand on every side but I thought I saw rocks across the the brook and stepped off the trail. And stepped on a rock pile I would not have seen. This one found me:

It has two larger rocks at either end. In between are a number of smaller rocks, including some quartz which is common around here.

Then stepping over towards the brook, the new Royal Ferns were pretty:

See the flat meadow in the background? The brook meanders through it. But check out this rock pile in the brook:

I don't see how this could be anything other than a rock pile which got buried in silt.

Oak Hill, Dover

For the most part I found the walk to Oak Hill to be dull: dry woods and muddy swamps. But I kept seeing outcrops that looked modified, with bits of stone wall connecting or extending them. I saw this propped boulder:

 I only photo'd a couple of rock piles.

These were both along the heights. Both have the shape of a "U" and are about 4 feet across:

I interpret this as an early form of "rectangle with hollow".

Name that flower

Seen in Shirley.

Shirley Appetizer

A note about the southern slopes of Merrill Hill along Musquash Brook - Hudson NH

Just a note:

There are rock piles just about everywhere you would expect. I was a bit surprised at "?" (location not precise) and bit disappointed not seeing anything next to the larger pond. At D was an example of rock piles turned into a fire pit. See the rocks on the left:

And another (triangular) pile a few feet away.

At A, was a larger mound, as I was hoping:

 

I blogged about C here and here. At "?" there were a few piles on rocks around a small spring. There were, in the end, quite a few along the slope.

(I guess that wasn't such a quick note.) 

One More Bulldozer Story

I've got one more sad "Stone Structures vs Modern Machines" Story to add.
Before:

 After:

See: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2013/05/been-busy.html