Friday, October 30, 2009

Ruins, Mounds, Field Clearing, or What?

Here is something a little different:Where the story left off, I had just parked and noticed a grid of rock piles and a short stretch of wall next to a farm dump and borrow pit. That was to the north of the road. But I had planned to sneak into the woods to the south, so after a few minutes poking around the grid, I went across the road and stepped into the woods just below a farm field. There were more rock piles over there but they were different, unfamiliar.

The first impression was this was an outcrop with frost-broken rocks. But the rocks were clustered into mounds. In the next picture you can make out a sort of path that passes to the right of the larger tree.That path then went through a break in the stone wall leading into an area of about 1/4 acre, enclosed by stone wall on the field side (to the right in the above) and outcrop to the left. This area was a very suitable ceremonial location: a knoll looking out over a spring with views to the south and west: Here is what I saw stepping into the enclosed area:Note the two "mounds" to the left and lower on the slope. Note also the unstructured mess of broken rock on the level area and to the right. The piles in this level area did not have much integrity as piles. It was more like a tumbled down ruin. Also this was broken ledge rock not glacial till. So maybe someone cleaned up a bunch of loose rock from the field on the other side of the stone wall there. Generally with field clearing you expect rocks of many different sizes - perhaps some piles with smaller rocks dumped on piles with larger rocks.

On the other hand, these two downslope mounds do have some integrity as piles:They are positioned right at the edge of the drop off to the spring:You can see these rocks are mostly the same general size and mostly are broken rock. So I have a hard time believing these are just field clearing but they are right next to a field and at the lower edge. But why across a stone wall?

2 comments :

pwax said...

It is a good fit for a Wachusett Tradition burial site, if we assume the "ruin" was a mound with a hollow.

pwax said...

Saying this in 2012