Some photos from the springtime

This boulder on the beach in Tiverton, Rhode Island has some extremely worn and eroded markings that I believe are Indian petroglyphs.

The most obvious that can still be made out today are a pecked triangle and a shallow cup mark. It has been suggested that this cup mark could have been used as a mortar, but the small mortars like this that I have seen have been on portable cobbles ("nutting stones"), with mortars on boulders usually being much larger, in my experience.

Cup mark:

Here's the triangle. The triangle seems to have been an important shape, New England Indians decorated some of their pottery with triangular marks.

At Fort Hill in Eastham, Massachusetts is another large boulder marked with grooves from prehistoric Indians sharpening tools. The boulder has been moved from its original location and surrounded by concrete but the sharpening grooves are impressive. It is marked on a trail map and there is a sign at the rock that explains the markings. Is this the only place in New England where a sign marks a place where people today can see something that Indians made? I can't think of another example.

Here's an interesting bit of structure at the top of an embankment at the Gilbert Stuart Birthplace and Museum, North Kingstown, Rhode Island. Arrowheads were found nearby, long ago.

An interesting wall, Middleboro, Massachusetts.

On Memorial Day I spent all day searching for arrowheads. I walked so many miles, my legs still ache two days later. I searched in five different places and found nothing in four of them. But I had some luck in the first place I stopped, I spent 4 hours there. Here are my finds. The big red felsite piece at right is crude and I think it was a scraper. The arrowhead in the middle is a nice find, and the one at bottom left is a whole one, though it is asymmetrical, probably reworked down from something bigger.

I really like this one. The base is damaged.

Somehow after I left the field I seem to have lost the broken triangle at bottom center in the group shot. I hope it is in my car but I haven't been able to find it. It is just a fragment and most people would not recognize it was an artifact but this is the first time I have ever lost any of my finds. I spend so much time looking for this stuff, I need to be able to keep track of the things that I do find. But really my hobby is looking for these things, not necessarily finding them, or even keeping them.