Turtle Piles v.1

Several years ago Tom Paul, of NEARA, took a photo [click on the word photo] of a wonderful rock pile from near his house in CT, which he said looked like a turtle. I agree and this type of pile shows up in several places. Here is one that Norman photo'd: The point of similarity is the "head drawn back into the shell" look - produced by the flat plate one course of stone up from the bottom, placed over a larger "head" in the lowest course - to the lower left in this picture. This one is from, I think, Hopkinton RI. Come to think of it Tim Fohl has a picture of one of these from the Conant land in Carlisle, MA. This site has already been made public, so if you care to go in there, behind the town hall, you won't have too much trouble finding this When I went to look for that picture, I found another turtle picture from Tim, this one from Killingworth, CT where there has been quite a lot of of rock pile activity (discovery, conflict, state archeologists, surveys, etc... but that is another story). This Killingworth turtle is a great example - the head is not so "drawn back into its shell". Come to think of it, though, there are several other designs of rock piles which we call " turtles", like the one at Great Brook Farm, or the one from Stow I showed earlier. Lets turn that topic into a separate post.