Thursday, February 23, 2012

Following intuition - seeking out standard topographic settings when exploring (part 1)

It is getting late in the week and I still have three sites to describe from last weekend: two near Gibbs Mountain ( middle and right-hand outlines on the map here) and a third from a ravine to the south of Gates Pond in Berlin (MA) . Perhaps I can describe them together. In the case of all of these sites, I found them opportunistically because I happened to pass certain topographic settings that I knew are often worth examining. These are:
- shoulders of hills, especially westward facing
- gullies where new water comes out
- the flanks of ravines near their entrance
(Another topographic setting worth exploring is a saddle between hills or above a watershed. I did not see an example of this last weekend)

Shoulder of Hills
On my way up the hill to the north of Gibbs Mountain, where the pipelines cross, I saw a shoulder facing northwest with some rock piles:
You can see this is a level spot before the hill resumes its rise to a summit.Hard to escape the idea that this next one is a triangular pile. It has some interesting components:
Here is a nice one:
As I get to the highest part of this "level" spot the piles get slightly larger
The view:How about this back wall at the site?On hill shoulders like this, I expect to find marker pile sites. Not sure but I think that is what we have here.
I guess I'll tell about the other two sites in later posts.

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