Standing at the southwest corner of what was the "Old Horse Field" on my Great Grandfather Giovanni Rinaldi's farm, looking into the neighbor's yard, I thought to myself that even though I've seen this "heap of stones" so many times in the last 50 years that it was sort of funny that I had never actually thought about it as a possible Indigenous stone pile before the other day when my Uncle Bob asked me to see if I could find the survey markers for the property lines:
Over the last few days I've been back to Uncle Bob's, helping him out at the house, hearing old stories of family history - which includes my Great Grandfather's and Great Uncle's stone work in the area - and talking about this business of identifying Stone Ceremonial Landscapes and Features. I've written about this "Horse Field" before, as well as the stone wall edge of it that in no way resembles any "Decorative Estate Wall" Giovanni Rinaldi ever built. It centers on a stonework spring in the "Horse Field" and radiates into the stony outcrops to the west of it, interesting stonework 'decorating' it, so to speak, there on the edge of an area named for the White Deer Rocks mentioned by the Woodbury Historian William Cothren: “…White Deer Rocks are about
two miles farther on, near the head of Quassapaug Lake. These were so named
from the numbers of white deer that made these rocks their hiding place, and
found their way cautiously to the lake, to obtain water (History of Ancient Woodbury, Connecticut: From the First
Indian Deed to the Present, Volume 2 (1872) - page 850).
There is a lot of stonework and I'm trying to map it. So far I've got this:
The Medhurst Family Home:
That stone pile in the first photo closer:
Step back and there's another stone mound just barely visible through the leaves:
Closer - cobbles on a boulder:
There are many smaller piles, faint outlines of a trail south and west that passes by this:
Farther on, another boulder with interesting additions, behind it are at least two other stone rows and a big split boulder, again just sort of visible to the west:
If you see the arrow pointing to the "Quartz Workshop Boulder" and are wondering just what I mean, this is the boulder:
Could this be a source for projectile points?
Could there be something of a relationship with this White Quartz and the White Deer?
Another view of the same:
And I'll add this: It should say "Ridge-top Stone Serpents" by that uppermost "gateway" that looks like this, several Stone Serpents at a ridge-top:
More serpents and overlays here:
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