As with many of my pictures, these are a few years old now. I was fortunate to be taken to this site by Fred Werkheiser, whom you see in the center, and his father, here seen on top of the wall--or elongated rock pile as some might say.
The site was on top of a hill. Fred found it by looking from another hilltop site and figuring out where the next site should be.
Most of us have seen sites like this, where one or two walls run down steep hills.
Interesting boulders of blackish stone stood in various places on this hill.
And at about the very top, there was a rock pile of some size, roughly oval in shape. you can see the surrounding hills very well from here.
The most interesting feature of that rock pile was a hole near the middle. A person I spoke with, a descendant of the indigenous Lenape, suggested, when I described it to him, that it could have been a sort of sensory-deprivation site for young teen boys on vision quest. Fred thought the whole rock pile with the hole looked like a big eyeball effigy, an eyeball looking up at the sky.
The other major element we saw on the site was a circle of stones. It didn't look as old as the stone pile and wall. Interesting feature, nonetheless.
Although many miles away, this site was placed on one of the hills that make up the same hill system as those that hold the pits at Vera Cruz and the site at Oley Hills. There's something about these hills . . .Which reminds me, when I was a child growing up out along the Kittatinny Ridge in eastern PA, the Dutch farmers told my father that the Indians told their ancestors, "If the white man knew what was in these mountains, he would ride down the street without making a sound." That's the sort of thing that makes an impression on a young child.
2 comments :
I can safely say that there are areas around here where every single hilltop has some structures. My guess is that this is true in general but many hilltops have been erased. Nonetheless one excellent hunting strategy is simply: go to the top of an unexplored hill. That's how I found sites near Stow MA, and how I found a site yesterday during lunch hour, and how I would be nearly guaranteed of finding more sites should I do it in the less disturbed areas west of Worcester.
(much later) Ah yes but that is only one strategy! There is also the strategy of following brooks to their headwaters. Or looking along the edges of saddles between summits.
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