Hopkinton Field Trips with Bruce McAleer (2) - gaps, gateways, and more gaps

Another site Bruce took me to is at the edge of a vast rock pile area in Hopkinton/Holliston. At first glance this was your typical southern New England site, with rock piles like little dumplings, evenly spaced over a flat area:
Here is a closer look and some of them:These are just great. There are not too many sites like this north of the Mass Pike but compare to the Acton Grid or the Stow Grid. But aside from these piles, I started noticing pile-gap-pile structures, and there were lots of them. Some with larger gaps:Some with smaller gaps:
This one is more like a funnel:
There were also some lovely individual piles. This one looked symmetric to either side of a little beakey head:
(Don't even say it Tim! There is no carapace.)

A lovely place, with lovely dappled sunlight and shade:If we had gone further we would have just seen more rock piles. This was a few hundred yards south of College Rock.

Commenting about pile-gap-pile structures: this is the third site I know with a predominance of these structures. They also occur one or two at a time in other places. The other sites with many such structures are in Westford and in Bolton - widely scattered across the countryside. Although I do not like to argue against the "field clearing" hypothesis for rock piles - (because it only keeps that absurd idea alive), still one of the strongest arguments against it is the appearance of deliberate identifiable structures like pile-gap-piles across the landscape in widely different places. That implies a common culture was producing these structures and since there are no such cultrual concepts from Europe, it must be some other culture that was all across our landscape. It must be that Indians made these - by a process of elimination. Somebody had to do it and it sure wasn't Europeans.

Hopkinton Field Trips with Bruce McAleer

Bruce took me to a couple of sites last weekend. Here is the first one, a slope along the eastern shore of Whitehall Reservoir in Hopkinton. Bruce tells the story: he was canoeing with his wife on the lake and, caught by rain, they came to shore here. Bruce saw some nice quartz outcrops and thought: "there must be some rock piles around here" and started looking around. The site is on a slope facing westward over the water. At the top is an outcrop: Where Bruce is standing there was some quartz that looked like it had been manipulated:And there was a bit of wall starting at the outcrop and going off downhill (left in the picture above) towards the water. Look at the little bit of connecting wall near Bruce's feet - a compulsive joining together of parts of the outcrop:And here is a view of the slope:There are about five rock piles in this picture, low to the ground, and some of them having bits of quartz. This sometimes suggests burials but I was not confident of that at this site. For one thing, many of the piles were up on support boulders. Another common type of pile, that I started to notice here, was piles with a large rock at one end. Maybe these are headstones? Another:And one more:I show these because it only dawned on me belatedly that this was a repeated pattern at this site. So I want to give enough examples that you get the idea. To me, the most interesting feature of the site was another stone wall, also coming up from the water up towards the outcrop, but to the side. This wall curved towards the outcrop and stopped thirty yards or so from the outcrop. At first we were over by the wall looking at some rock piles near it:But then I noticed a curious bulge coming out from the wall, you can see it to the right side of this picture: Here is a closeup: You can see this was a structure. There were some large flat plates of rock in the tumble and it really looked like a collapsed chamber. Definitely worth looking at some more. Then, downhill closer to the lake, the wall went around a corner. See the nice quartz at the middle of the corner?I should also mention some piles built up with vertical sides - suggesting not graves but "marker" (i.e. calendrical) piles. I should also mention that there was another wall at the lower end of the site. Across this wall, on the lake side, were two fairly large piles made with large rocks.

A rare quartz wedged rock

This is the first example I have seen of quartz used as a wedge in a split rock. So this is pretty rare. Given that split rocks are suspected to represent doorways to the underworld, I always thought the absence of such quartz as a wedge was because you would not be leaving this kind of amplifier/ transmitter at an entrance. But, right or wrong, here is an example from east of Whitehall Reservoir.This leaves my theory scrambling for excuses to the effect that this must have been a particularly friendly spirit.

Sorry for no new posts

I have some good stuff from the weekend but have not been able to find time to get it posted. Sorry for the delay.

Smallpox burials - Harvard, MA

Not far from Poorhouse Rd in Harvard, is a solitary gravemarker. Nearby in the woods there are a number of small ground piles with white rocks - adding to the general suspicion that this is how Indians were buried (at least sometimes).The gravestone reads:
"Here lies the body of Capt. Benjamin Stewart of Boston, who died of the smallpox June 16th 1775, in ye 45th year of his age".

For a long time FFC has speculated that the smallpox patients were moved out to the fringes (which would be true of Harvard, MA in 1775). In this case, possibly the poorhouse was involved with smallpox victims. Anyway, here is a gentleman from Boston buried in Harvard with suspected Indian graves all around. You sense a story. The rock piles are pretty easy to miss:Yet one sees a piece of white rock, not quartz but feldspar this time - aptly called the "poor man's quartz".


With small rock-on-rock structures at the periphery of the area:Also some slightly larger piles off in one direction:Here is one pile that caught my eye:This reminds me of some similar structure I saw in Falmouth [click here and scroll down].

I think FFC has made a good guess. It seems reasonable that a smallpox victim would be moved out to the poorhouse in Harvard, and then buried with the other poor who, at the time, happened to be Indians. Why Indians? Well who buries anyone under a rock pile with a white rock? I suppose this is circular reasoning.

Two Turtle Poem

The Two Turtles Again

Ruminations from the Distant Hills

A blog post comment led me back to this blog. It is impressive in its love of the woods. That being a topic area I have been thinking is a broader category into which this "Rock Piles" blog fits. If you have not visited their recently, it is worth another visit.

Effigy with a quartz head - Boxborough, MA

At the Beaver Brook Conservation land, right next to a trail, I saw this rock pile. I have seen it in the past but here are some fresh pictures.There is not much doubt in my mind that this is deliberate construction with the quartz placed as it is (lowest in picture). Also it really looks symmetric and like a head although [I know] it is subjective - Here is a side view:What do you think? Tim, it is not a turtle and it is not a mammoth. On the other side of the pile from the quartz there was a bit of a flat plate. Could this be a bird? or a beaver?

Update: Maybe this is the same Unktena "horned monster" myth that I wrote about here. I did not mention that this pile, here, is one of two; the second having quartz in the middle. That matches the previous rock pile pair reasonably closely. Theseventhgeneration's 2nd comment, for some reason, caused me to speculate that the flat plate behind the quartz might be like the 'horns". I know it does not fit exactly. Here is the 2nd pile. I did not show it earlier because it was so covered with plants:And a "detail" of its piece of quartz:

Waldseemuller Map at the Library of Congress

Thanks to Terry Devaux on the NEARA message board for this:


http://www.loc. gov/rr/geogmap/ waldexh.html

The following message comes from John W. Hessler ...

If you were not one of the nearly 400 people who could attend last month's Waldseemuller Symposium at the Library of Congress or if you did and just wanted to watch it all again it is now available as a web/podcast on the Library of Congress' website.

All four sessions of 'Exploring Waldseemuller' s World' are there for free download and viewing.

Session 1: Scholars and Scientists
Session 2: Exploring the Known and the Unknown
Session 3: Sources and Texts
Session 4: Changes and Revolutions

http://www.loc. gov/today/ cyberlc/results. php?cat=1

Hope you enjoy it...it is over ten hours long!!!!

John W. Hessler
Senior Cartographic Librarian
Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society

Cairn at Child's Park in Dingman's Ferry, PA. from Norman Muller

From Norman Muller:

Before a small group of us drove and hiked to the wall complex (click here) , we visited Child's Park in Dingman's Ferry, PA, a beautiful area with spectacular waterfalls and surrounding pine woods. To reach the waterfall, we walked down some steps to the pool in front of the waterfall, and from there we followed a trail downstream for a couple of hundred yards where we came upon two large cairns, one of which was still in relatively good condition with a small terraced wall surrounding it. We didn't know quite what to make of this construction, but we later decided that the terrace wall was of recent viintage to help protect the cairn, which we concluded was ancient. Stone lined pathways weaved in and out of the cairns, and it is possible they date to a period when the cairns were a destination for visitors. The other cairn is within twenty feet of the other and has partially collapsed, but it is still impressive.

I am attaching four photos of this area: one of the waterfall, and several of the cairns.

Stone Wall Complex - Milford, PA. From Norman Muller

Norman writes:
I was shown a most impressive wall site in Milford, PA, just over the border from NJ. It is probably the most mind boggling wall complex I have ever seen, not only for its size, but for the intricacy of the stonework, which is just amazing. The complex is in very rocky, and occasionally swampy terrain, with walls curving every which way, as you can see in image 385. In one section of the wall (image 384), extremely small stones were used in the construction. The walls in some cases are at least six feet high or more (images 369 and 370), and mostly 2.5 to 3 feet wide (image 380). Imagine the work that went into this, since each stone represents a separate action on the part of the builder. Colonial? I seriously doubt it, given its location, curving walls, complexity, and the sheer manpower and time involved.

Boxborough Hilltop Rock Pile Site

Took a walk with my wife and re-visited an old friend - a site on top of a hill in Boxborough MA. One of the more interesting features, is the pile visible on the left to the rear above.
Pretty clearly a deliberate gap.

One special thing about this hilltop is the scattering of large boulders.

Hog Swamp outcrop

Driving south on Rt 495 in Bolton/Berlin MA, there is a cut through the bedrock on the right a short ways (perhaps 1/2 mile) before you get to the Rt 62 exit. I have been trying to figure out how to get to this outcrop from the land side, but it appeared to be surrounded by the swamp there, called "Hog Swamp". I realized, though, that I could go to end of Quaker Lane and sneak through backyards. I actually knocked on a door for permission but, getting no answer, I snuck around without it. The area I got to was not as isolated as I had hoped, as there was an old stone causeway in one place leading over to the higher ground from Quaker Lane. I figure the Quakers had used this ground systematically. Nevertheless, possibly because of Indians coming back afterwards, there were a couple of little signs of ceremony on the southeastern side of the rise of land cut by the highway - a couple of rock piles a few yards from the highway.Seems like there is always a little something, if you look for it.Just for my own recollections: there was a brown creeper (a small bird) that wouldn't leave me alone when I got to the highpoint. It is fun being superstitious and I imagined it was telling me to look closer - which I did until I found the couple of rock piles.

Still Thinking about Mastadons

If the oldest Paleo Indian sites in CT do go back 20,000 years and Mastadons romped around at the same time, well don't you think just maybe: Could it be a Mastadon?

Irises at Beaver Brook Meadow - Boxborough, MA