A rock pile marking a boundary

At one hilltop I visited last weekend I found an isolated pile with a standing stone. I know for a fact that this hilltop is the corner of a property - on my topo it is a corner of one small piece of Leominster State Forest.
If I did not know this was a boundary corner, I might have compared this to the piles with standing "manitou" stones we saw last week from Norman Muller. Note the blue tags on the tree behind:
There was even a hint of quartz in the pile - someone added a couple of pieces.
Nice even though not ceremonial:

Hood ornament and ceremony?

A small Wachusett facing rock pile site

I have written about what I call "marker piles" and, in particular about marker pile sites which face Wachusett [for example here] [especially here] [or more generally here]. The idea that Wachusett is a central location in the Native American spirituality of eastern Massachusetts first was told to me by Curtis Hoffman. At the time I did not think there was that much basis for the idea and, in the end, I do not think Wachusett was by any means the only such important location, or that viewing distant prominent hills is the only reason for building a rock pile site. Up north of here, in places like in Westford, Tyngsboro, and Townsend, there are very similar rock pile sites that face towards the west and northwest - certainly not facing Wachusett. (Perhaps they might be facing Monadnock.) Anyway these sites appear near a hilltop on a slope facing a prominence and the piles are similar in size and tend to be evenly spaced and in lines. Occasionally there will be a single (?) pile with a piece of quartz. That one pile will look a lot like a grave but this is a very particular context of a pile with quartz and I do not think these sites are graveyards.Last week I noticed a small hill east of Wachusett and, liking to explore out that way (I think it was East Princeton), I headed out on Saturday. I saw some nice woods and eventually got up to the hilltop. There were houses there and I was prepared to be disappointed but I skirted the development hoping there would, at least, be woods to the southwest in the direction facing Wachusett. There was and I was walking along, saw one rock pile hidden in the pine needles and then realized there were numerous low piles - almost completely buried in the duff. At first seeing a white quartz piece in one pile, I thought: "hmmm....graves?". But then I saw the three piles in a row, evenly spaced. This swung my opinion over more towards it being a marker pile site. Here is another occasional feature of a marker pile site: a single rock-on-rock with a curious suggestive shape near at the upper side of the site: (For reference, here is one of the nicest of all marker pile sites I know (in Stow MA). Note the single pile with quartz and the single example of a rock-on-rock. [Click here]) You can see this rock-on-rock at the end of line of three items, two rock piles and this rock-on-rock. Although you probably cannot make it out through the glare, here is a view of Wachusett, to the southwest. The white tower at the top of Wachusett was visible when I took the picture. These piles are more substantial than you would think at first glance. They are very broken down and well covered: Finally, here is a bit of a panorama to help give the mood of the place: Taking this picture, Wachusett is off behind my left shoulder.

The Fortean Times - online

My friend Derek sent this to me:

This came from Fortean Times online... It's from their gallery of simulacrum images...

One of the best, I think. The stone "turtle" in Mongolia is pretty good too.

Check it out and enjoy...

-Derek

http://www.forteantimes.com/community/photos/708/simulacra.html

More about Georgia rock piles.

Have we seen this (h/t Tim MacSweeney)?
http://www.thesga.org/Historic%20Rock%20Pilings.pdf

I paricularly like this quote:
"...It is clear to all reasearchers of piled rock features that the variety of features encountered reflects differing aspects of functional and cultural affiliation. No one questions that some are pre-historic and some are historic, or that some are mortuary and others are simple discard piles. The problem is sorting out the types..."

Wait! It gets better:
"...One startling discovery was the recovery a small "superball" about 40cm below the top of rock pile 4. This obviously modern artifact illustrates how quickly an artifact can work its way through a rock pile...."

Split Filled Boulders along the Taconic State Parkway - with Norman Muller and Larry Harrop

Larry Harrop wrote (and I edited slightly). Let's go take a look:

I just posted a site that Norman visited.
http://rockpiles.ws/blog/index.php?/archives/2007/11/12.html

I'm sure a lot of people would enjoy seeing this beauty.
The full description with pictures is here.
http://rock-piles.com/fahnestock/index.html

Georgia State Botanical Garden Rock Piles.

"...He shared with me some sites he feels are worth fighting for and, in passing, mentioned a particularly interesting site that has been preserved for many years: the rock piles out at the State Botanical Garden. “Rock piles? What's 'at? Like Andy Goldsworthy’s eco-art?” I said. “Far from it,” he replied. “They’re one of the most fascinating things in Georgia that nobody’s ever bothered to really study, at least as far as I know. And that’s probably why they’re still there....”
[Click here for the whole article]

And a letter of response [Click here]

A Comparison of Two Boulder Cairns

by JimP

Cairn A

Cairn B

Cairn A and Cairn B appear to me to share similarities that are beyond coicidence. Both cairns are built in depressions on boulders of similar size. Both cairns fill the depressions in a similar way. Both exhibit possible niches at the bottom centers with possible triangle symbolism offset above the niches.

Cairn A sits in a once-busy area with known 19th and 20th century activity. Nearby features include steel drill holes in a boulder, a nicely built turtle cairn, and a very well-constructed platform cairn. Both of those cairns are suspected by some researchers of having been reconstructed in fairly recent times.

Cairn B, however, sits on private property in a heavily wooded area that has had no known modern activity. It sits less than a mile from Cairn A, yet Cairn B has had a very different life from Cairn A. Cairn B has likely not been reconstructed for at least the last 200 years -- the last time any of the land nearby was pasture.

If both cairns were constructed by the same people, which is suggested by their similarities, it is not likely that could've happened since the 18th century. Cairn A sits on land adjacent to the Miner Farm but off Bob Miner's property. Cairn B is tucked deeply away in a wooded section of the Panther Orchard Farm property. Both pieces of property haven't had the same owner since the 18th century.

Both properties exhibit extensive colonial and Indian usage. The likeliest original builders of both cairns are the Niantic Indians. Narragansett Indians may also have used the site of Cairn A in more modern times, reconstructing the cairns and adding features such as the manitou stone by Cairn A.

Yes, it's all conjecture. I admit it. But it's constructive conjecture.

Cairns with standing Manitou Stones in Grafton, NY - from Norman Muller

Norman writes:

A month ago, I and three other had a tour of the Grafton, NY, area with Warren Broderick, an archivist with the NY State Museum. Warren is familar with some interesting lithic sites in and around Albany, and he took us to this beautiful area in a state park in Grafton. Most impressive were a number of large stone mounds or cairns, two of which had standing stones stuck in the middle. These mounds were near a beaver pond and at the base of a steep rocky ledge, on top of which was a stone seat and some indistinct stonework. I was most impressed by a stone on top of one of the mounds (shown with a friend of mine, John Waltz, to the right, and Mariann to the left). This stone looked much like the god stones that Ezra Stiles writes about. We had a gorgeous day for a visit, and the woods were beautiful early in October.
The photos I sent are more or less in order. Numbers 30-34 are of the cairn with a large standing stone, probably sandstone, placed in the middle.
This is similar to one I saw in Waldeboro, Maine, about five years ago (see above). This mound was also near a beaver pond, shown in the distance in one of the photos. Number 38 shows a mound with a notched standing stone, and No. 42 shows the unusual looking manitou stone. The last image in the series (actually the first), is a view through the woods.
No stonework, but just a beautiful sight.

Canid buried under cairn

"Stratum 2, about four feet thick, contains a variety of lanceolate and stemmed projectile points of Early through Middle Archaic complexes. Two significant finds of the 1966 season were made in the lowermost levels or stratum 2. Parts of a human burial which appeared to have been disturbed at a later time, may be one of the earliest burials in the Ozark Highlands. A suggested date, based on associated Early Archaic projectile points, is about 7000-5000 B.C. Nearby, but somewhat higher in the fill, was a canid burial which had been placed beneath a small stone cairn. No artifacts were directly associated with the cairn, but its occurrence in one of the low-est levels of Stratum 2 prompts the speculation that this burial may be one of the earlier instances of canid domestication in North America."

From Hickory County Missouri Mastodons

A "kids stone fort"

This is along the lines of everyone building rock piles on Nagog Hill in Acton. But in this case, in an area that had two other large boulders with rock piles built on them, it seems as if the modern construction is made on top of an older one. Note the moss on the rocks in the 3rd picture.
What none of the pictures captures is that the rock outline is open at one end (just off the right edge of the last picture) and there is a short stretch of wall separate from the outline and dividing the opening in two parts. I took a video to show the whole structure as well as what appeared to be a crescent formed on the ground besides the fort, made of low single rocks buried in the leaves. But the video wouldn't download from the camera and I lost the details I would have liked to show. They suggest that this is not a normal kids fort. At a minimum, you'll admit, it is surprisingly well made.

Everyone builds rock piles on Nagog Hill

For example behind a house:And beside a pipeline
The variety never lets up.

A Corner Pile - a rock pile built into a corner between stone walls

This is from Nagog Hill, Acton MA.
This kind of pile is more traditionally considered related to field clearing. Yet it is not far from that polygonal rock pile of the previous post.

Magazine: Eerie PA

By Geophile

Was at a book store today and idly picked up a magazine called Eerie PA. In it were short articles on the Hallstead Cairn Field, Ringing Rocks, Indian God Rock ( a petroglyph stone along the Allegheny River), Hexenkopf (a natural rock outcropping in Northampton County), Money Rocks (a natural rock outcropping in Lancaster County) and Columcille, a modern stone site with standing stones, trilothons, etc., recently built. It's the fourth issue and I wonder what I've missed in the first three!

A nice summary of rock pile information

From Dreamcrisp [Click here]

A small platform pile on Nagog Hill, Acton MA

This rock pile is somewhere between square and pentagonal. It is about 12 feet across and might have had a flat, or slightly domed, upper surface. To me, it looks vandalized - with a hole dug into it. Nagog Hill is a place with so many different kinds of rock piles I do not get a sense of consistency. This is nothing like the large pile I showed the other day, nor like the "graves" and supported piles I showed a moment ago. This pile is isolated but not far from lots of other intersting piles but this is the only one of its kind I am aware of on this hill. It reminds me a bit of the piles I saw down in Weston. [I hope to someday go back over these records and look for some consistent patterns of pile types and locations. Where are piles like this found?]Here is a little video:

Along the stone fence - a small rock pile site with piles on boulders and a few non-descript ground piles

This is another place on Nagog Hill, Acton. I went in one conservation land entrance and then stayed to the left as much as I could behind the fields and houses. I expected to find something but, as usual when you first see a rock pile site, you don't quite believe it:
Was this a bit of the stone wall spilling over onto an adjacent boulder? To the far right of the picture is another rock. On closer inspection this one is too far from the wall.
I figured this to be a ceremonial pile. And there was yet another in the background. As I went along next to the stone wall, the first time I passed, I caught maybe one more rock pile on the ground. Something like this:
And like this:
I detect lighter colored single rocks in these low ground piles. I think of this as "grave" feature, although I never really know.

This place, along the stone wall is a strip of land maybe 20 yards wide between the wall and a wetland it faces to the southeast. When I explored more carefully there were possibly ten piles in there. There are three or perhaps four visible in this picture:
I am not sure of the function of this site. With grave-like piles and piles supported up on boulders.

Nobscot Hill, Sudbury MA - where are the cairns?

Since Jim P. brought this up in comments I have been wondering whether I should look harder. So let's have a look at Nobscot Hill.Hmm....? I have looked inside the red outlines but there is lots more area to the hill.

A modern stack of rose quartz

This is not "rock pile" related but is a beautiful thing. [Click here]

Saami Seidas and other Cultural Stones

By Geophile

In the Western hemisphere they're most often called glacial erratics. And, of course, real glacial erratics do exist. I am probably not the only person here, however, who has seen big stones, especially in outstanding or extraordinary places on the landscape, that looked . . . manipulated.

That is why I like this link.

And this, while a bit rambling, is also interesting.

Around Nagog Hill; eg a large monumental pile - Acton, MA

Nagog Hill in Acton has numerous rock piles on it. I thought it would be fun to go out and explore around some fringes areas I hadn't ever gotten to. In the end I saw things everywhere. Some "graves" in one place and some monumental platform cairns in another. Perhaps the most impressive thing and easily the largest rock pile, made from the largest rocks, of any I have seen on Nagog Hill was this one: facing southwest and built into a natural outcrop. This would be as good a southwestern view as you would be likely to get on Nagog Hill. I suspect Wachusett would be visible, if not for the trees. Here it is the pile from below: And from above: And from the side: This sized pile could be from field clearing. But the constituent rocks are rather consistently in size and there are no other little dumpings of smaller rocks nearby. So it does not have the right characteristics for field clearing. Also it is at a high point. It is more of the style of large piles from the Manoosnoc's and from the Moosehorn. It is definately not a common style for Acton.

Walking in different spots on the hill, I thought I found a recent stone fort built from what was perhaps a more ancient rock pile. And also I saw new "stacks" next to the trail and built on stone walls behind people's houses. It appears that eveyone builds rock piles on Nagog Hill. I'll show some more in further posts.

Eye Candy - some nice colors from Acton MA

In this one, a faint line of rocks leads up to an interesting shaped larger boulder with two rocks on the boulder like a continuation of the line:

A "U" shaped structure - from Larry Harrop's Blog

Larry describes a simple but interesting site in Rhode Island. I was struck by the mention of a crack in the bedrock. [Click here]

NEARA FALL MEETING STARTS TODAY

If you are going or can drive down to New London - please report back. I am not planning to attend but hope someone can let us know how it goes.

Here is the link

Canine Forensics?

By Geophile

Found this today and thought I'd post it. I'm not sure how these dogs were supposed to detect burials if they were centuries old. I hope that not many people who are contemplating disassembling their rock mounds will see this and think it's valid. I'm not sure what state this site was in but it looks western.

And of course, the fact that they're not burials, which they very well may not be, doesn't mean they're not worth preserving. But that's probably even harder to make people understand.