Those are some largish pieces of rock in there.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments
(
Atom
)
skip to main
|
skip to sidebar
This is about rock piles and stone mound sites in New England. A balance is needed between keeping them secret and making them public. Also arrowheads, stone tools and other surface archaeology.
A Book about Rock Piles
Contact
rockpilesmail@gmail.com
Contributors
Blogs and Other Links
- Waking Up on Turtle Island
- Secret Landscapes
- Larry Harrop
- Two Headwaters
- Laurel Hill Walks
- Historical Writings on US Antiquities
- Traces In the Woods
- Ceremonial Stoneworks of the NorthEast
- Rock Piles of Northeast CT
- Pre-historic stone works in the Town of Catskill
- A New England Woodland
- Stone Wings
- The People of One Fire
- INSIDE NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR ARCHAEOLOGY
- Tispaquin's Revenge
- Menotomy Maps
- My Red Schoolhouse
- Bay States - the Bay Circuit Trail
- Rhode Island Footprints
- Derek Gunn's Amazing Massachusetts
- Relics of the Ancients
- Indian Stones/Cairns/Intentions
- Fort Devens Stone Wall MAP [PDF]
- STUPID SHEET
- Stone Ruins, Cellar Walls
- Hi Tor Stone Monuments
- Concord Lithics
- Indian Rockpiles by Peter Waksman
- Lithic Roxborough
- Chenango Archaeologists
- New England Megaliths
- Heritage Daily
- New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA)
- Stone Cairns of West -Central Texas
- Mojave Desert Blog
- Native American Research and Preservation, Inc
Blog Archive
-
▼
2009
(
452
)
-
▼
October
(
63
)
- Bolton, MA Woods - videos
- Old stone tool from Acton
- Good walking
- Update on the effigy with quartz
- A few more piles from last weekend
- A little outcrop ceremony
- Ruins, Mounds, Field Clearing, or What?
- Snake Legend
- East side of Peach Hill - a gridded site next to a...
- Last Look at Peach Hill
- Effigy with quartz - trying to make sense of it.
- Serpentine wall - Northern Berkshires
- Stone Row in Delaware Water Gap
- Rock Pile Vandalism
- Fishweir Blues
- Bringing back the American Chestnut
- Native American Tribal Historic Officers speak abo...
- Peach Hill Videos
- A hillside covered with marker pile clusters
- Ceremonial Landscape - Discussion by Tribal Elders
- Clam Gardens
- Articles about EMC development plan
- EMC - threat to Indian Stone Mounds
- EMC threatens Indian Sacred Stone Mounds in Southb...
- Appetizer
- Dig uncovers significant historical site in Narrag...
- No Less Sacred
- Fall colors at Marble Hill - Stow, MA
- Small Marker Pile cluster on Marble Hill
- "In the gunsight" - openings intersected
- Nice picture of small chamber from Larry Harrop
- Saving Judaculla Rock
- Critical Mass and Blogs re-enforcing each other
- Propped boulders and Manitou stones - slideshow fr...
- Tispaquin's Revenge
- Gap Piles
- Stone Pile in Winslow, Maine
- EMC expansion threatens rock pile sites
- Hawea Heiau
- Stone walls are not all made by colonial farmers
- Don't Ignore the rocks!
- Rock on Boulder, etc
- Split boulders from Norman Muller
- Colonial Sheep Farm
- Ohio Archeology Blog
- Southern Callahan State Park - Framingham, MA.
- Interpretation / "meaning"
- Atlantic Conference in Nova Scotia
- New "study group" conference.
- Honking Geese from southern Callahan State Forest
- Split-Filled versus split-wedged
- Rock pile near the parking lot at Walden Pond
- Boulders and wedges
- Driving around Carlisle with FFC
- Where arrowheads come from
- NEARA Fall Meeting in Boxborough
- Wolf Pits
- Ustû'tlï or the "foot" snake
- Dear Massachusetts Historical Commission
- Wall Bridge - Sturbridge, MA
- Revisiting an old post
- Acknowledging Rock Piles - Some thoughts from Jame...
- Indian Stone Heap
-
▼
October
(
63
)
10 comments :
Another thing that bothers me about the donation pile concept, is the incentive it gives to ignoring actual details of a situation. For example in this picture some of the "donations" are sizeable rocks. Note they are placed like walls at either end of the split, with smaller rocks in between. Is this a coincidence or intentional structure? My point would be that if we are limited to the idea of donation piles, this would tend to suppress the question and would tend to dismiss the observation. That does not sound good for science.
I think you have the wrong impression of so-called donation piles (and I will agree that is a HORRIBLE name for these features.) It wasn't simply fist-sized pieces of stone carried to a boulder and cast on top. Instead, it was the materials that were on hand that determined what went into a pile. Why are there bigger rocks in that split-filled boulder? Because that's what was nearby. Why were there very few smaller stones on Sacrifice Rock near Plymouth? Because there aren't a lot of stones there, so they either carried them to the boulder, or cast brush upon the pile.
In certain instances, such as the feature under discussion, the width between the split halves of the boulder must have been a major consideration in deciding what size rocks should be chosen to bridge the gap. Several nearby small boulders apparently were enough in this instance. Using them meant less labor expended overall, than had dozens of fist-size stones been selected. For a split boulder in Montville, CT, with an aperture of a little more than a foot, a wall-like structure of small rocks was constructed to bridge the gap.
"Bridging the gap" sound like a function different from the making of offerings in propitiation.
Widely separated split boulder halves were probably viewed differently than those with a narrow gap. Then one has a third and different example from Pomfret, VT, where a semicircle of stones has been constructed at one end of the split boulder, each end of the necklace of stones touching one end of the split halve, and symbolically connecting them. There is also a similar construction in Holliston, MA.
Thanks Norman for providing examples that suggest there is much more going on than is mentioned in the ethnographic literature.
No one EVER said that there isn't MORE going on than what's in the ethnographic literature.
There's a big difference between inventing a fancy name and function for these features based on nothing but your own personal observations -- versus using what we know of the ethnography to draw conclusions about such features.
The latter is good scholarship. The former will make your work as important as James Arnold's druid theories from the 19th century.
Accurate descriptions of what we see, but for which we have no ethnographic evidence or explanation, are also important and may eventually lead to real insight.
How do you suppose they study Stonehenge?
Post a Comment