tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post6367100867003576150..comments2024-03-14T01:33:48.461-04:00Comments on <b>Rock Piles</b>: Agricultural use versus rock pile site countspwaxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16647940752050937588noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-54033716529565971482015-03-07T05:54:22.651-05:002015-03-07T05:54:22.651-05:00Forest Burning and Clearing by Hudson Valley India...Forest Burning and Clearing by Hudson Valley Indians 1000 Years Ago - http://curtinarchaeology.com/blog/2010/07/28/forest-burning-and-clearing-by-hudson-valley-indians-1000-years-ago/Tim MacSweeneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15517237193572593390noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-84471781090424871302015-02-09T06:22:46.084-05:002015-02-09T06:22:46.084-05:00Where I am there is a great abundance of zigzag &q...Where I am there is a great abundance of zigzag "stone walls" - all supposedly a result of field clearing stones thrown against a wooden rail fence. But I find almost all are carefully constructed, the exceptions looking as if they have been taken apart, plundered for reuse. The only places I've found that suggest random, haphazard field clearing are piles of stones in between the Tim MacSweeneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15517237193572593390noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-3597805064534897492015-02-08T00:47:30.761-05:002015-02-08T00:47:30.761-05:00Peter, Since I have the same site info from Mark W...Peter, Since I have the same site info from Mark Williams at UGA that Curt has, and quite a bit more of my own, I still could not posit a credible answer to your question. What would be considered agricuLtural land in Georgia has changed since most of the stone piles were constructed..the Woodland people of 2000 years ago used the land differently from the Mississippian people who followd them. Tommy Hudsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02119838822497231421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-74800768959152238802015-01-31T11:17:39.289-05:002015-01-31T11:17:39.289-05:00In the table, ignoring the low sample states: ever...In the table, ignoring the low sample states: every New England state has significantly higher site percentage in NON- agricultural land. Same for NY. Then PA is about equally split. SC and GA have significantly higher percent sites on agricultural land. <br /><br />The progressive shift in the balance, going north to south is interesting and needs more confirmation. NJ, for example, needs more pwaxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16647940752050937588noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-5851098763475328242015-01-31T10:51:23.873-05:002015-01-31T10:51:23.873-05:00This might be relevant to the conversation - "...This might be relevant to the conversation - " “Early accounts of the pre-settlement landscape are consistent in their descriptions of fertile soils, abundant wildlife, and healthy human populations. Although reliable information is lacking on the number of people that presettlement agro-ecosystems were capable of supporting, it seems likely that numbers were much higher than generally Tim MacSweeneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15517237193572593390noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-16480779577295237742015-01-31T10:39:49.322-05:002015-01-31T10:39:49.322-05:00Bird' Eye Bing Burnt Hill: http://binged.it/1J...Bird' Eye Bing Burnt Hill: http://binged.it/1JWRp7lTim MacSweeneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15517237193572593390noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-82628805442061151472015-01-31T10:33:02.344-05:002015-01-31T10:33:02.344-05:00Norman: It's more of my own personal theory (o...Norman: It's more of my own personal theory (or hypothesis?), based on observation (and maybe logic) here (mostly) around the Nonnewaug Floodplain, rather than anything I've ever found in any work I've ever come across anywhere ever since reading Changes in the Land. I've attempted to talk to Cronon, but he's never responded to my emails. I think that the rows of stone on Tim MacSweeneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15517237193572593390noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-39682055064334730842015-01-31T09:56:14.195-05:002015-01-31T09:56:14.195-05:00Tim mentions "stone fuel breaks" built o...Tim mentions "stone fuel breaks" built over thousands of years to control fire. Where could I read more information on this? How was the function of the walls determined?Normanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10560996385875773347noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-70731116867496458272015-01-31T08:15:37.849-05:002015-01-31T08:15:37.849-05:00Tommy, almost all of the data I have from Georgia ...Tommy, almost all of the data I have from Georgia comes from Mark Williams' extensive inventory of sites. I have not visited any of them. But it isn't SWAG: the site locations he provided are quite precise, and we correlated these using GIS with soil types and then - as I said to Tim - correlated the soil types with NRCS data. Soil which has high agricultural potential is not Curt Hoffmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02409822723614523110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-18751579496196842732015-01-30T11:16:57.156-05:002015-01-30T11:16:57.156-05:00Correction: I meant I DO believe rock piles are co...Correction: I meant I DO believe rock piles are correlated to wet rocky land.<br /><br />Clarification of the meaning of the table would be helpful.<br /><br />pwaxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16647940752050937588noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-64594132917332566542015-01-30T08:21:54.251-05:002015-01-30T08:21:54.251-05:00Easy Tommy, Curt's on our side, just trying to...Easy Tommy, Curt's on our side, just trying to get this info into the record around here is a tough battle! Two well known facts often neglected to take into perspective are the Pre-Contact Indigenous use of fire to produce an abundance of resources in a densely populated area with an increasing sedentism/territorialism would have to have an increasingly better means of controlling those Tim MacSweeneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15517237193572593390noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-76433506141176362092015-01-29T22:43:51.458-05:002015-01-29T22:43:51.458-05:00"This is especially the case in Georgia and S..."This is especially the case in Georgia and South Carolina" Not hardly. First of all, I would doubt Mr. Hoffman has visited more than a few of his claimed 440 stone piles in Georgia to verify their in-situ context, without which, it would be difficult to determine their relationship to say, "agriculture." In my line of work, where I associate with mathamatical and statistical Tommy Hudsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02119838822497231421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-18297216110556881052015-01-29T17:18:00.773-05:002015-01-29T17:18:00.773-05:00I used "rock pile region" to gloss over ...I used "rock pile region" to gloss over the details of the way I count 1x1 K squares, on the topo map. <br /><br />Taking it from a different direction: I have seen plenty of fields with stone walls and occasionally (quite rarely) there are crummy rock piles scattered around the field's edge. It is not for lack of rock but because, around here, farmers were mostly pretty tidy. pwaxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16647940752050937588noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-79811302689630852162015-01-29T07:39:39.362-05:002015-01-29T07:39:39.362-05:00Curt: I get ya! But I'd still like to take you...Curt: I get ya! But I'd still like to take you for a little walkabout around the old Nonnewaug Wigwams where what's left of the "stone walls" exist by already cleared floodplain fields. And where you can still find some of the pieces of old chestnut rails of the first legal fences can be found here and there, as well as interesting stone features linking the old trail border to Tim MacSweeneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15517237193572593390noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-26578333859135898722015-01-28T19:39:55.347-05:002015-01-28T19:39:55.347-05:00In answer to Peter -
Yes, but as you yourself h...In answer to Peter - <br /> Yes, but as you yourself have demonstrated, most of the rock pile sites are not located in the floodplains of the Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord Rivers in those towns - that is where the agriculturally productive lands are. How are you defining a "rock pile region"? By a coherent cluster of sites?<br /><br />In answer to Tim -<br /> I use the information Curt Hoffmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02409822723614523110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-19805421055111921752015-01-28T08:53:44.144-05:002015-01-28T08:53:44.144-05:00How are you defining the terms "agricultural ...How are you defining the terms "agricultural use," "high productivity" etc? I'm guessing that it means according to that imported European style of agriculture, since "pasture" is included, swamps considered "infertile" - the Cultural Landscape after 1620 you might say. Tim MacSweeneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15517237193572593390noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21010261.post-21294423894566217012015-01-27T07:14:33.677-05:002015-01-27T07:14:33.677-05:00This is somewhat contrary to my finding, where I c...This is somewhat contrary to my finding, where I count rock pile regions per town:<br /><br />Sudbury 4<br />Lincoln 4<br />Concord 7<br />Boxborough 11<br />Stow 16<br />Acton 21<br />Carlisle 24<br /><br />Sudbury and Concord are the most agricultural towns.pwaxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16647940752050937588noreply@blogger.com