Here is a rock pile incorporating a coil of barbed wire like a "wreath". Tim Fohl found this in Townsend.
Here, a tangle of straight wire sits on top of the pile and collects debris.I found this one in Bolton in the same conservation land as the broken plow tip pile.
It is hard correcting for the difference between true north and magnetic north. Around here (Massachusetts) they are about 15 degrees different - but who can remember which way? The idea of the stupid sheet is to show the major celestial events: solstices and equinoxes - as they would appear in their relative positions on a magnetic compass. This way you do not have to be too smart to use it. Just set the compass down on top of the paper so that the vertical "north" matches the compass north. Then you can read off the directions to various celestial events. In the winter soltice video, you can pick off the solstice sunrise direction as about "4 oclock" - which is supposed to match the direction of the "head" sticking out of the rock.
[Click here]
Title: Cobbles, Cairns, and Manitous: An Examination of the Use of Stone in
Native American Landscapes
Authors: Sean B. Dunham (Commonwealth Cultural Resources Group, Inc.), Janet
G. Brashler (Grand Valley State University), and Charles E. Cleland (Michigan
State University)
Abstract: Enigmatic cobble piles and walls have elicited a variety of
interpretations throughout the Great Lakes region, e.g., astronomical
calendars, henge monuments, and burial mounds. While most of these features
reflect early historic Euroamerican agricultural practices or natural
phenomena, certain of the sites can be attributed to prehistoric and historic
Native American land use. Both archaeological and historical sources have
indicated a variety of possible interpretations for such
features, including burial cairns, votive precincts, and the byproduct of
agricultural field clearing. This paper will present a discussion of these
stone features in the Upper Great Lakes from a variety of sources, including
ethnographic, ethnohistorical, and archaeological.
Paper presented at the 43rd Midwest Archaeological Conference, Muncie,
Indiana, 21-24 October 1998.
*Travels in New-England and New-York, 1821-22 by Timothy Dwight (published posthumously)Smaller and very irregular heaps are frequent amongst the hills. They do not generally embrace more than a couple of cartloads of stone, and almost invariably cover a skeleton. Occasionally the amount of stones is much greater. Rude implements are sometimes found with the skeletons. A number of such graves have been observed near Sinking Springs, Highland County, Ohio; also in Adams County in the same state and in Greenup County, Kentucky, at a point nearly opposite the town of Portsmouth on the Ohio.
Heaps of similar character are found in the Atlantic States, where they were raised by the Indians over the bodies of those who met their death by accident, or in the manner of whose death there was something unusual. Dwight, in his Travels*, mentions a heap of stones of this description which was raised over the body of a warrior killed by accident, on the old Indian trail between Hartford and Farmington, the seat of the Tunxis Indians, in Connecticut. Traces of a similar heap still exist on the old trail between Schenectady and Cherry Valley in New York, with which a like tradition is connected, They were not raised at once, but were the accumulations of a long period, it being the custom for each warrior as he passed the spot to add a stone to the pile. Hence the general occurrence of these rude monuments near some frequented trail or path.
Like so many sites around here it has these noticeable characteristics
I first found this site when I took a wrong turn, ending up taking a quick peek into the woods and found it where I would not have expected to see a site: on a pretty steep slope.
One pile was different:
Quoting: "Some piles appear to have a retaining wall or almost vertical sides. Others lack that feature or are too tumbled over. The pictured tumbled pile looks like someone might have pulled apart one example of a stack. On the way in, this tumbled pile is the firsts pile you see and is the closest pile to the road. So it is likely to be a vandalized pile. Some (undamaged ones) are triangular or shaped a bit like teardrops and these are reminiscent of the Acton Spring Hill grid. One pile was significantly larger than others and might be a platform pile:"
In retrospect, I conclude that this pile is the viewing position from which the other piles are visible uphill. Here are some other views:
Quoting: "I guess the site is shaped like a piece of pie cut out from the hill. In the previous picture you can see one of the walls that runs up either side of the site to the top. I did not notice it when I took the picture, but this pile has a white rock to lower right in the picture. Note also the rock-on-rock in the background. Here is a detail:"
The lines of evenly spaced piles is characteristic enough of the site but I think the real clues to what is going on here are in the minor details like this rock-on-rock and the platform pile below. I think I have already written about this rock-on-rock. I hope I do not have to point out that the upper rock looks as if it might represent an animal. I think this cedar tree was planted next to the rock-on-rock and have a guess that this might be a monument to a fallen warrior. Why think that? Because there is a famous Indian battlefield in Sudbury at "King Philips Woods". Those woods are filled with rock piles and a number of rock-on-rock next to cedar trees. So I make a connection with battles - perhaps completely wrong, but it is a hypothesis worth keeping in mind.
Here is one more from the top of the site where the slope has leveled out a bit. You can see that the spacing between piles is consitent over the whole site. This is a key characteristic.
Quoting: "So there you have it, a very fortuitous find, a lovely site with good integrity, a new type of rock pile site emerging: the stack grid with one (or more?) blazed piles. I counted 41 piles in all. Looking back over what I wrote I see that there are basically stacks with possible viewing platform(s). There is a possibility of other types of piles - more burial like - mixed in between the stacks; alternatively these are simply damaged stacks."
| Archeological Site CA SBR 3186 ** (added 1981 - Site - #81000170) Also known as Aboriginal Rock Cairn Complex Address Restricted, Silver Lake | ||||||||||||||||||
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This is very reminiscent of a rock-on-rock I found at the top of the site on the eastern side of the hill of 500 cairns [Click here]. Anyway, looking down from this spot there were other rock piles visible. Down and to the right I could see a pile next to the conservation land trail:
To the right, an outcrop (visible in the background of the above photo) ends in a tumble of rocks down to a stream. There was not much in that direction except for that nice moss-covered split-wedged rock [Click here].
Here is another - a panorama showing about five piles in the ferns:
I believe these are old knocked over piles. You may be tired of hearing about "marker piles" (click here) but, in the end, that is how I would guess this site should be classified. I was thinking that the number and size of constituent rocks in a pile remains unchanged when the pile is knocked over. So the only argument which could indicate a similarity with other, less damaged sites, would be based on counting and sizing the rocks in the piles here at this site. In particular, these dimensions reminded me of the Acton grid [Click here]. But I did not do any counting or sizing. Too lazy I guess. Anyway, it is very intriguing to imagine that the clusters of piles found on these Poor Farm Rd hills, are all loosely connected with lines of rock-on-rock. So we could call it one large site or several inter-connected smaller sites.
These piles seemed to stretch out across the hillside, all at the same level. I would call it a line of rock-on-rocks joining together this first cluster of piles with another; but it was not just rock-on-rocks, some of the piles had multiple rocks:
Actually, also below this imagined line there were other piles down to the stone wall at the edge of the wetland. Aside from that, following the piles across the slope (still going counter-clockwise around the hill but now heading north) led to some nicer piles up on support boulders:
And finally over to the nicest view of the day:
This is as good as it gets for me. The tranquility of the place contends with my excitment about finding it.
That is a precariously balanced arrangement. Is it related to the site? Hard to believe it would not be.
Harvard, MA is a town west of Boston. If you look at the topo map of Harvard, where Poor Farm Rd crosses Rt 2 you'll see lots of suggestive looking places where hills meet water. I climbed one hill from the north and was thinking how my "eastern" strategy is to look for where hills meet water but that that here in Harvard it might make more sense to follow a "western" strategy involving climbing the hill and checking the southwestern side of the hilltop. Coming in from the north, I turned right at the top of the hill and pushed towards the west through a veil of white pine saplings, and came to an area with larger boulders on the surface and saw a first rock pile:
After that I saw about twenty other piles. Most were on the ground under the larger pine trees but the site also had simple piles on support rocks like the first one.
The more common type of piles were trangular ground piles that looked thoroughly broken down retaining only a faint sense of the shape. 
There was a suggestion of a white rock (made of feldspar in this case, not quartz) at the center of more than one. One pile almost looked like it had a bit of vertical facing. 
This makes for four of the occasional characteristics of marker piles: 
and a line of rock-on-rock inviting me to explore further down in on the eastern side.
In the end, I did go down that way and found another cluster of rock piles where the hill ended at a brook. So both the "eastern" and "western" strategies would have worked. 
This is in Harvard, MA at the edge of a site I will describe.
These photos are from a site in Exeter, RI. Features here seem both very ancient and quite modern, and this site may serve as a possible example of an ancient site with New Age disturbance. For that reason I am not disclosing its location. I can personally attest to the fact that the current configuration of rocks has been relatively undisturbed here for roughly the last 20 years.
We'll take a longer look during the week.
The first question is kind of bogus. The sizes of rocks here have nothing to do with the sizes of rocks used in stone walls and there are no stone walls around, so why even ask about a connection?
The second question is considerably more interesting. What my neighbor actually said was more to the effect that his understanding of the glacier was that it contained rocks of all sizes and simply dropped them willy-nilly into the positions that they currently occupy. To this there are a number of answers. One is that there have been way too many more recent agitations of the land surface, much more weathering, and much more forest "violence", which need to be accounted for. In fact the rocks are not currently in the position they were left in by the glacier.
And here is how I know this. Go most anywhere and these types of small rocks lying on top of larger rocks simply do not occur. It is not a matter of random events occurring at a certain frequency. If rocks did start out piled up on top of each other after the glacer, forces since then have brought down those piles. So when you see a large number of violations of this probability, and all occurring within a few feet of each other (and in particular surrounded by areas of rock with no occurrances) this is not something which could have been done by the glacier.
It is also worth mentioning that in many of these pictures there are non-glacial rocks with sharp edges. So no, these could not have been dropped by the glacier in this way.
A human face simulacrum very similar to one found at the Oley Hills site
A possible visage in the mountain-face itself, looking toward Delaware Water Gap. The tree in front of it is large, not a sapling.
A third face. It may be facing north or northeast.
![[Click here and scroll down]](http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.islandnet.com/beaconhillpark/graphics/358g_Cairn_view_2March05.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.islandnet.com/beaconhillpark/contents/chapter20.htm&h=350&w=527&sz=18&tbnid=kPt0-7EBVoMAgM:&tbnh=85&tbnw=129&hl=en&ei=A-eVRP7LNpKWaJuY_Cw&sig2=Mnj0YdGnQq8LE54qwFWKHQ&start=3&prev=/images%3Fq%3DBurial%2BCairn%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN){kind=link}
![[Click here]](http://www.ncmuseumofhistory.org/workshops/indian/jud.jpg){kind=link}