Delaware State Forest - NY

by theseventhgeneration

This was the last "thing" (for lack of a better word) I found on my most recent hike.





Before I could snap one more photo, the snow came in so heavy, it was a white out. Walking around the left side of this structure, and up hill, there is a clear view under that large top boulder. It's not a view to the horizon, just through to the other side. I sketched it on the computer to try to show how that top boulder was positioned:



This area was recently clear cut. I tried to walk through it once in the fall, but it was impossible to get around and/or see anything under foot due to the low brush cover. To try and give you an idea of context, this photo, which was taken in the fall, is labeled to show the grid and large cairn area nearby:



This structure is located in the brush, closer to the bottom of the hill, near the large cairn side of the photo.

One thought that comes to mind, looking at this structure as a whole, is the "heart" or open L shape.

A story from Two Headwaters

[Click here]

More nice rock piles in the snow, from Carlisle, MA

I know it means little to just look at the pictures of rock piles. I wish I had something intelligent to say about them. The best I can offer is that this was a site where the underlying bedrock was exposed in multiple little ridges creating corridors between the ridges, set off here and there by rock piles with a strong sense of there being deliberate lines of site following the natural bedrock. Like the pig skull site (as I said) and like the site from Harvard where it seemed the outcrops blended in with artificial terracing. All similar ideas of incorporating the direction of the bedrock.

Anyway, here were some of the nicer piles:

Old trail in the snow - Carlisle, MA

Ancient Land - Quotes about the Berkshires

Bruce McAleer sent this:

Just playing around with google and came across these quotes. The link to the quote source is below.


How does this pertain to the Berkshires? We tend, Piasecki says, to forget that this land -- as with all land -- has an ancient history, and also a Native American history that predates European settlement. Some clues to the land’s cultural history are buried, like arrowheads that surface as farmers plow their fields. Other clues are in plain view. On a knoll near the center of Stockbridge stands a 20-foot spire of stone. A monument that English settlers erected to mark a Native American burial site, it recalls the town’s origin as a Mahican Indian settlement along the Housatonic River, made up of groups gathered by Reverend John Sergeant. Now the area is a golf course, its history erased, except for the stone spire.

And here's another paragraph.

In the forest, rather than simply cut a trail and mark it with blazes, Piasecki and his staff followed hunting trails and deer paths, finding vernal pools and old stone piles. (New England is dotted with these piles, he says, and no one is precisely sure of their origins.) To guide the family through their woods, Piasecki made sculptural markers, using materials found on the site. He restacked some stone piles, and created others: rocks piled within the hollow of a multi-trunked oak tree; a chunk of quartz wedged into the crook of a hornbeam; downed branches shaped into a rustic bridge between two trailside trees.

http://www.goldenbough.net/berkshireliving.html

"Springtime" in New England

Not rock pile related:

Mashantucket Museum Question

From Tim MacS.

Going back to my very first post (http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2006/06/first-post.html) at “Waking Up On Turtle Island,” as well as my untitled 2nd post, I’d like to pose the question to any Rock Pile team members and readers that may have been to the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center who have toured the re-created Village, “How would you correct the picture presented there to include the stone structures that many of us strongly suspect to be Native American constructions?”

Recently I sent out, to some trusted people, a composite partial floor plan of the Museum’s village, as well as a stylized (and really incomplete) rendition of a relatively undeveloped area of land that in local histories was known as “The _____ Wigwams,” a real rarity which deserves protection and study – and could correct an inaccurate picture of the Cultural Landscape that, as the CT State Archeologist would change the whole the present view of prehistoric Connecticut (and to which I add, perhaps the whole of the country).

While driving the other day, my thoughts wandering and touching upon that idea of a more culturally correct representation of the village and its connected environs, I realized that I need some additional rooms that lead to distant places where similar places and structures exist in the many places that people are sending into Rock Piles.

And now it crosses my mind as I write this, perhaps it might be necessary to have entire wings dedicated to the many findings of Waksman, Muller, Porter and numerous others that I don’t mean to offend by leaving out their names here.

Upton OK's plan for cellphone tower

A cellphone tower on top of Pratt Hill, where there are big rockpiles related, according to Mavor and Dix, to viewing the heliacal rising of the Pleiades. Doug Harris from the Narragansett Tribal HIstoric Preservation Office is on the job. From the "Wicked Local...Upton" [Click here]

Cairn in the snow - NY

by theseventhgeneration

This is a site I've visited before, in the summer. Coming back to it in the winter, I was able to find some different features I hadn't noticed before.

First, was how the vertical face of this cairn highlights the view of the cairn behind it. The snow and lack of leaf cover makes it stand out, as this picture shows:



So, this had me examining the vertical face of this cairn up close, where I noticed something else different:



On the bottom stone, this interesting marking.



There was, at a minimum, one more stone within the cairn that had a similar marking, but not as dramatic. The thought, and after consulting with pwax, is that this is a natural feature. But it would not be surprising to think that the builder(s) also noticed this feature and made use of these rocks deliberately.

New Gungywamp Photos From Larry Harrop

posted by JimPApparently our old friends Larry Harrop and Bob Minor spent some time at Gungywamp recently. [Click Here] to see more photos and read Larry's blog entries.

Propped Slab from Mt. Monadnock

From Tim Fohl:

I was intrigued by a propped slab in one of your blog places. I ran across a similar object on the Pumpelly Trail on Mt. Monadnock a couple of years ago.The red stripes on the pole are ten cm long.

More Carlisle Cons. Land with FFC

This was a place with rock outcrops forming little corridors where you could stand surrounded by rocks. There was a sense that the rocks themselves were enhancing one direction.
And as we went in, we started seeing some pretty nice piles, in good condition.
This reminds me a lot of the site with the pig skull in Tyngsborough.


And what about this one? You better believe someone who built rock piles was also in there moving larger rocks around:

Some pics from Carlisle MA Conservation Land

Visited a known site with FFC but we came upon it from a new direction, seeing things differently. Later we got to those lines of site described in earlier posts this week. Here are some views. More to follow:Another:

When a rock pile appears next to a boulder, consider the view through the space between them.
Here is that view
A vague thought forming slowly is the thought of rock piles sometimes defining "negative" space.

Stone wall on an outcrop

by theseventhgeneration

This is a site I found at the very end of a hike, on the opposite side of a creek. From a distance, I thought it might be a platform cairn, but it is a stone wall on an outcrop.



This is the other side of the wall, looking 'upstream'.



From what I could tell, the wall ended here:



There is something interesting at this end of the stone wall. I'm not sure if this could be considered a see through niche. From this photo, it appears to have some relationship to the stone wall. You can see the white hump in the background is where the stone wall comes, gradually, to an end.



It has a good sized opening, all the way through:



This is looking from the opposite side. The opening is down low so it's not something you can look through easily.



It's an area I need to come back to when the snow is gone. I wasn't able to follow the wall further downstream on this trip. The creek here is in the Susquehanna watershed. About a mile south of this site is the Delaware watershed.

Nipsachuck Photos

by JimP

The photo above shows members of Dr. Meli's team doing field work in North Smithfield.

[CLICK HERE] to visit Dr. Meli's website and view more photos from the dig at North Smithfield.

Nice zig-zag stone walls in the snow

Here are some nice pictures from "Waking up on Turtle Island" [click here]

Some interesting links

HIstorical references over at "Two Headwaters" [click here]

FFC's tiny ceremonies

FFC is always trying to get me to look more closely at little stone arrangements that seem nearly natural, almost random, to me. I think this example illustrates why tiny stone structures seem real. His picture: Nature does not make little lines of pebbles going around a right angle. For scale, note the green heart-leafed lilly leaves above and slightly right of center. They are ~1.5 inches long.

Thomas Minor's Diary - 1653 to 1684

by JimP

Thomas Minor lived on a farm in the frontier of what is today Stonington, CT during the latter half of the 17th Century. Perhaps he is an ancestor of our very own Bob Minor? Anyhow, as many readers probably already know, Stonington, CT is filled to the gills with rock piles and stone structures.

Thomas Minor left a rather humble record of his life in the form of a diary. The Minor family cared for the diary until it was finally published in the late 19th century. It is a fascinating glimpse into the life of a contact period farmer in the years leading up to and immediately following King Philip's War.

More than 30 Indians are mentioned in the diary. Most were hired to do manual labor. One example had an Indian man working for 20 days to obtain a coat. Some of the tasks they performed included building stone and log fences, breaking the soil, carrying corn to the mill, carrying lumber from the mill, and gathering hay.

One fascinating entry has an Indian man delivering a letter to Thomas Minor. From what we know about how Indians carried news -- the fastest runners going from village to village -- it is possible that those early colonists utilized Indian news-carriers to deliver letters and packages.

But, by far, the most curious entry concerns Thomas Minor's primary Indian laborer named Agedouset. The entry is dated February 8, 1666.

"agedousets daughter was borne under a rocke the 8 day thursday"

[CLICK HERE] to read Thomas Minor's Diary online at Google Books.

Lines of rocks visible in the snow

Tim M. is right that you can see things in the snow that you cannot at other times. Aside from being able to see deeper into the woods, sometimes rocks show up more clearly. For example, look at the line(s) of rocks in this picture:Note the larger piles are lower on the knoll. Perhaps to be viewed from above - say - somewhere on top of the knoll.

Do the stone and pile placements seem grid-like?

Stone ruins at Ft. McClellan

Reader Toby T. writes in:
" I was searching [the web] for Indian ruins on Ft. McClellan and found your website. In 1988 I was attending OCS at Ft. McClellan. On one of our map course exercises, we had to climb a mountain and check off it’s coordinates. On the top of that mountain was an extraordinary stone home. The walls were, incredibly, still intact. There were several small rooms and existing entrance openings. It was obvious that the structure was extremely old. We had to keep moving, so I could spend little time there. Some day, I’d love to return and find those ruins again. They are very rare indeed and incredible to see. "

Does anyone have any more information about this?

A review of Timrek's "Hidden Landscape"

From "History Buff".
[Click here]
Found this by backtracking a visitor.

Reader pics - part 2 "Bridge, shelter, storage?

Reader Bob also writes: " found this up by Little Swartswood Lake..."(fallen in at the rear?)Any ideas?

Pics from a reader - Part 1

Reader Bob writes in:
"thought you might see if these pictures I have taken looking for the mines are of any interest. The one looks like a fire place now and there is even wood piled up but that stick leaning against it is over 5' long. I found that right down the street up in the woods a few weeks ago. The other two are at the Edison Mine Site in Ogdensburg, NJ. "

Piles arranged in lines around a central feature: MilkyWay x SummerSoltice

There is a bit of a rock pile site in Carlisle Conservation Land and it may have many different purposes. Certainly each time I visit it, I bring with me the baggage of my latest assumptions and hypotheses, and so I see different things. One time at this site I was struck by the "effigy"-like quality of some of the piles. Another time I was struck by a number of piles with black/white pairs of cobbles next to each other in the pile. This last time, I went with FFC and the focus was on alignments.

[If the movie does not load, click here]

So, from a high point we look down one line of piles that are lined up in a direction related to the Milky Way (northernmost extreme rising, or something...), and another set of lined up rocks related to a different Milky Way direction (southernmost....). Meanwhile a different alignment is suggested, visible also from the same high point and running along the line of the summer solstice sunrise. Hence the idea of identifying a marker pile site by its principal aligments:

(milky way) x (summer solstice).

There is some more serious surveying to do at this site but I want to focus on one observation that may be worth of keeping track of and of being applied again at other places: one of the lines of sight, passes directly parallel with the vertical face of a rock pile. I use the word "crisp" in the video to describe one view of the vertical face. Later, another vertical face, with its suggestion of directionality, cause me to look down along that direction and spot a prominent pile. So there might be a small drop of truth here.

We have puzzled over why some piles seem to have a clean vertical face on one side only. Now the suggestion is that this might be to make the viewing direction "crisp" from one direction. This means, look along the line parallel with the vertical face to locate viewing positions.

Cairns worldwide - new and old

Norman Muller sent in this link: [Click here].

Norman writes: Interesting photo of an exceptionally tall cairn from somewhere in Canada. It reminds me of an article Tom Brannan wrote for the NEARA Journal some years ago in which he illustrated cairns similar to this one, but all of them in the PA and NY area

Stories In Stone

Posted by JimP

Stories In Stone is a short documentary co-produced by Marc Levitt and Lilach Dekel. It's about Narragansett stone masons. [CLICK HERE] to see a short preview of the film (QuickTime plug-in required).

Glimpsed through the pines

Appetizer

Beaver Island Stone Circle

A visitor came looking for information about "Beaver Island Stone Circle". They were looking for this [click here]. Don't know if I posted the link before.

Stone Piles in Western Sahara

GeophileSomeone on the Portal posted a link to a page about an archaeological project in Western Sahara and it shows some nice stone piles including the one above. Also standing stones, stone rings and schematics of various stone pile and monument types. The site is here. I wasn't aware there were stone piles in that region. I guess they really are everywhere.

A couple of summers ago...

...it was like this:

A Scottish Cairn

Norman Muller sent this in - "a photo taken by Colin Purvis of Hawich in the Scottish Borders that Nick Aiken sent".