Tuesday, October 31, 2006

A Hill in Southern Tyngsboro, MA - Part 1

This hill is east of XXX Hill but looks very similar and I wanted to check it out to see if it would be as covered with rock piles. Well, not quite but I had a fun walk there Saturday in the rain. I parked over east of the hill and went straight up the steep side to the top. The top was trashed out into a sandpit and I walked north along the top and then cut down into the woods on the northwest side of the hill. I immediately saw one rock-on-rock and what looked like some tumbled-down piles. Then I walked further west downhill to a wetland and south until I sensed lake and houses through the trees. So I cut back uphill and saw one small rock pile site below the brow of the hill just about a break-out zone (blue outline on lower left, above). This site looked to have numerous small shapeless ground piles one with quartz in the center and two with small deliberate "fins", mixed in with a few rock-on-rock and one or two boulder piles. The site faced rougly north and west. After that, having bagged a rock pile site, I started back towards the car. This took me back to where I had been before allowing me to explore a wetland and up along the southwestern foot of the main hill. Here, along a forest road (middle blue outline, above), was a site with most piles up on boulders on the level and on the slope. I explored this area little and then went back up and across the main hill, to explore that eastern foot of the hill (upper right blue outline, above) on the way back to my car. Just for fun I drew in my approximate path in red. All the sites are located along my return path although I did find some broken down remnant on the northwestern slope of the hill on my way out.

Here was something, as soon as I headed down hill on the north-western slope of the Hill.
Below that were three or four hints of broken down piles.The photos are taken facing north.

From here I went down hill, as I said and, turning back from the open space of XXX, I was skirting that rise and spotted piles:
This was a small area, enclosed by stone walls, located just above a break-out zone on the slope. I noticed a ground pile with quartz:
This is a pretty typical burial, which is why I am suppressing the location information.

Here is a small panorama, facing north.
You can see the rock-on-rock, and a number of minor features spotted around.
And also some slightly larger ones on boulders or knocked-off from boulders.
Those poor abused piles. As you can see the damage is ongoing.

Several of the piles had small "fins":
This last picture shows a pile with the fin detail. It could just be structural but my guess is it is not.

Here is a mini rock-on-rock:--------------[Continued in next post]---------------

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