I first posted about this site here. Had I hiked just a bit further earlier this year, I would have found the real "rock field", but it made a nice find last week. A map of the area:
In comparison to the map from the first post, this is just a little farther southeast of the features I reported back on May 20th. The map shows a stream near the road. However, between the "rock piles a through q" and the "rock pile near figure 8" there is a creek branch that was flowing heavily this week, following a lot of rain.There are at least 20 rock piles of various sizes at this site, in what I would describe as a compact grid. I marked some of the rock piles with the GPS, with the track log on, so just looking at these waypoints and remembering what I can about the site, I believe this is a fairly accurate representation of how the piles are arranged:
A couple of photos of the rock piles. This first one is very hollow. That yellow spot in the center is not a leaf, it's a hole. And how about that one perpendicular rock, in the center, to the right of the hole? It's not an uncommon feature around here, but how is it efficient to stack rocks that way if the purpose is agrarian?:
This one has a different shape. A second pile is in the background:
Going slightly downhill from the rock piles, but before reaching the creek branch, is this:
Next, this ground structure is just below the rocks in the photo above (they are within sight distance of each other), and is even closer to the creek.
Then, this is the "rock pile near figure 8" on the map. It is on the opposite (western) side of the creek branch. There are at least 2 additional, very small rock piles on the western side of the creek, but this is the only large rock pile on this side:
This is the strange, figure 8 structure. The implement (plow blade?) leaning up against the tree has me baffled. As with the previous ground structure, it is built in a very wet zone. The creek is just visible in the background here. This is looking upstream, so the rock pile site is to my right or roughly northeast. You might have to click on this photo to see the top half of the "8".
3 comments :
Thank goodness someone else is finding "grids". Could the "figure 8" be a house foundation?
I can't rule out that it is a house foundation, but if it is, here are some things to consider: it dates pre-1926 based on the USGS map from that time, it is very small so I would suspect if it is a house it would have been a small log cabin, and it is extremely wet. There are other, more satisfactory places to build on that flat that aren't so wet so why would they build there? I also don't believe it is mill related because the flow appears to be seasonal there.
On the grid, yes, I was excited to find the lines of piles. At one point I counted 5 in a row - some very small piles in between. The entire rows don't photograph well because of the beech trees so I may go back after a light snow and see if they show up better.
I am trying to get into the habit of pacing off distances between rock piles. I find sites where 12-13 paces is a common result and other sites where 8-9 paces is common. Is it real?
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