Thursday, March 15, 2012

Top of Hobbs Brook (#3) - The stone walls

With reference to the site described in several previous posts (eg here), my first visits to the place failed to find the nice rock piles but did notice the stone walls. There are several short stretches, like the one you can see on the right from Rt 2, heading west into Lincoln.Here it is from the top, Rt 2 visible to the right.But let's take this from the time of leaving those nice rock piles, in retrospect (to the right behind the wall):Looking in the other directions there is an opening, and one last rock pile (between the two trees).
We walk along the wall with the swamp to the left and clockwise with the ridge and higher ground to the right. What's this?We walk further, what a pretty little knoll!Still further is an "orthostat". I don't know what this means but Mavor and Dix write about them.Continuing...we come to another break in the wall and a small U-enclosure on the swamp side:And then, I guess, yet another break in the stone wall. You can see the small U-enclosure in the background. Interesting that it opens sort of towards this busy junction of the wall:[Parenthetically, I have to say this plays into a sense that walls may have guided a person's "journey" through a site. Can you imagine?]

Continuing, here is another orthostat. This is the only feature I remember from that long-ago NEARA field trip. Just to get the layout, the busy wall junction is to the upper left here:Then FFC continued around the edge while I climbed up and over the ridge, and we met at the top of the short stretch.
This wall is roughly straight down the ridge. At the same time there is a second wall that follows the ridge, perpendicular to the short stretch. Here at the top, it turns a corner:
[FFC is fiddling with a compass and print of his "STUPID SHEET" (see link to the right)].
After the hilltop corner, the wall heads back downhill to the west. Incorporating a large boulder, look what is on top, in line with the wall:Hmph! Historic period. There were a few more, badly smeared, piles in there. I hardly think they are from the historic period.
But I don't know.

2 comments :

pwax said...

Spend a minute looking carefully at the last picture. Some of the rock around the edge of the pile may have fallen away from the pile but, otherwise, it is clearly a small double-chambered affair.

pwax said...

...what I call a "Lazy 9" mound.
Want to mention to all those people commuting west on Rt 2 from Lexington to Lincoln, that you pass this ridge and pass the stone wall mentioned at the top of this post. Look at the bottom of that wall. I pass it every workday on the way home and am more and more convinced there is old mound there - gone back to dirt. Check it out you future people!