Rock Piles in a Sacred Place

Rob Buchanan writes:

Yesterday I visited the Chuang Yen Buddhist Monastery in Putnam County NY. As I was walking up the ceremonial pathway to the Great Buddha Hall I noticed a small boulder with an rock pile and a very large boulder in the woods behind it.

The large boulder was approx. 4m high and appeared to be tilted to the south. There was a widespread rock pile around the east and south sides of this boulder.

A few meters to the east of the boulder, on top on a small rock outcrop was another extensive rock pile.

Further to the east of these piles was a three-way split boulder with a rock pile extending southward from its southern edge.

There was also a niche-like feature on the western edge of this pile.

There were several smaller rock piles in the area. One interesting pile was on the south end of a split boulder that appeared to have a small pile in the split.

This site is not far from several Putnam County chambers (Meads Corner, Dicktown) and is relatively close to some areas with many rock piles and stone structures (Stillwater Lake, Bushy Ridge and Wiccopee).

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Enjoy!

Rob Buchanan

Rowan Creek - "Offtrail for beginners"

Tim MacSweeney found a blog with some nice pictures:
Did you ever see this one?

http://gosmokies.knoxnews.com/profiles/blogs/rowan-creekofftrail-for

Indians DID build in stone

Norman writes:

There are some who continue to maintain that Native Americans in the eastern half of the U.S. had no stone building technology until they were taught by European settlers in the seventeenth century. Ohio was certainly part of the eastern U.S. the last time I looked, and the following excerpt, sent to me the other day by Robert Riordan, an archaeologist with Wayne State University in Ohio who is now investigating an unusual double circle of wooden posts at Fort Ancient in Ohio, called the Moorehead Circle, should give these naysayers something to think about:

“It incorporates literally tons of limestone as both chinking stones for posts as well as slabs laid as pavers in clay floors. We’re estimating that somewhere between 50-100 tons of stone was brought up 250 vertical feet from the Little Miami River level below the Fort, involving probably a mile of walking or more with each load that was carried. These people were an industrious lot!”

A Google search of “Moorehead Circle” will give more information about the site and dig.

Firsting and Lasting

From: Firsting and Lasting; Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England (Page 116)

Just Another "Mysterious Chamber"

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2010/09/just-another-mysterious-chamber.html

Summer starts to fade

And the rock piles poke out of the ferns.

Well written article on stone chambers

From a New York Times article [here]

Interesting link from the 1820s

Norman writes:

A colleague sent me this link:

[click here]

Not sure I like the Celtic reference, but anyway…

[PWAX adds - this is from a search for "Adair" and "heaps of small stones"]

Broken down prayer seat?

Exploring northeast of Rocky Hill in southern Groton, found a curious broken down stone structure built against a boulder. [I browsed around this blog's archives and found a reader already sent photos of this several years ago. Click here.] Here are a couple of views I took:
In the woods on the other side of the road, south of 119, there is a very high-backed prayer seat like structure, with see-through stonework. I cannot find if that has been posted before. Anyway, this was somewhat reminiscent of that and perhaps it was the style around these parts. I should add that I know one more of these, in the saddle between summits on Millstone Hill, which is also not too far from here.

Pollock Works

Norman Muller writes:

For many years Robert Riordan, an Ohio archaeologist, has been excavating the site known as the Pollock Works, a 2000 year old Hopewell site in Greene County, Ohio. As Riordan explains it in his recent article “Enclosed by Stone” (Hopewell Settlement Patterns, Subsistence, and Symbolic Landscapes, eds. A. Martin Byers and DeeAnne Wymer, Gainsville 2010, 215-229), the site “encompasses a 5-ha ovoid space that slopes downward toward the west, demarcated by vertical cliffs 3 to 15m high on the south, east, and north that blend into a broad talus on its western side. Embankments composed of earth and stone 3 m high were erected as a barrier wall across this western slope, stretching between the outcropping cliff on the south and the 7-m-high creek bluff on the north.”

In excavating a U-shaped portion of the western embankment, Riordan found five separate construction layers, the four top layers of which were capped with slabs of limestone. On the basis of his excavation, Riordan proposed that “a small, geologically isolated limestone plateau in southwestern Ohio was intentionally remodeled with embankments to cause it to better resemble, and thereby to more properly become, an elevated space that was considered to be divorced from its surrounding landscape: a hilltop effigy, if you will.”

The following pdf attachment explains the stones that Riordan’s team found, their number, weight and the work that was involved in carrying the stones to the site.

This is followed by a commentary on Riordan’s article by the editor, A. Martin Byers. A jpg of the engraving of the Pollock Works by Squier and Davis is also attached.

A pretty little marker pile site in Princeton MA

I drove out to Princeton, to see what it was like south of Mt. Wachusett. I found a nice little marker pile site near Houghton Rd. Light and shadow made it hard to get decent photos, this comes closeWe see nice small vertical sided piles, evenly spaced and in lines, V-shaped:Note the large rock in the background, seems to be incorporated into the pattern:Another nice rock pile (many were broken down, but I am showing the nice ones). It is hard to show how they are spaced and in lines. Here is an attempt:The "spacing" is such that the distance from the 2nd to the 3rd pile is about twice the distance from the first to the second. Note the position of the larger boulder to the right of the line of piles, and note the vertical sides of the piles, and how they are oriented almost perpendicular to the direction between the piles.

This location was to the side of a scooped out hill, on a shoulder at the edge of a wetland:
The wetland is to the left in the above, which is taken facing north. The structures seemed to continue out into the wet area a bit, so I walked in that direction a few yards.To me this was a pretty little site, compact and with well preserved rock piles. But the features are somewhat standardized and are familiar. When I went into the wetland a bit here was something I have not seen before, at least not just like this:
The water is coming up out of the ground right in that crack between the rocks, and the mossy rocks in the foreground seem to inseminate the crack, in a suggestive way. I believe this is a deliberate structure, especially since it is at the edge of the marker pile site.

Update: This is the Foresteire Edmund and Priscilla conservation land.

A Spring in My Zip Code

A Spring in my Zip Code

VEGETATION BURNING BY THE CHUMASH

By Jan Timbrook, John R Johnson, And David D. Earle

     "The question of whether aboriginal hunting-gathering peoples of California modified their environments by periodic burning of vegetation has been widely discussed, both by anthropologists and by geographers. Several tribes used fire in hunting, with such techniques as rabbit drives; to improve forage for game animals which would then be hunted; and to increase the availability of certain plants for direct use by humans (Lewis 1973). Bean and Lawton (1973:xxxvi) proposed that burning was part of a sophisticated technological inventory of energy extraction processes which supported the high population density and cultural complexity of aboriginal California. In their view, true agriculture was not adopted by most peoples in the state because it would have been not only unnecessary but a step backward in efficiency…"
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1rv936jq

see also
http://westinstenv.org/histwl/2008/02/24/before-the-wilderness-environmental-management-by-native-californians/

A KARUK MYTH & "pikiavish"

Coyote went upriver long ago to bring back fire.
They had stolen the fire, the upriver people.
And people were all just freezing,when it was gone here, the fire.
“Let me bring it back, the fire.
“I know how I can retrieve it.”

The Karuk speaker, Julia Starritt, telling this story used these words, “pa ni (kupa—) p ûukeev ish” in the last line of the above. 

And he saw there were fires, there were forest fires, up in the mountains.
And he went in a house.
And he saw only children were there.

And he said:“Where are they?
“Where are the men?”
And the children said,"They’re hunting in the mountains.”

The men were using fire to drive game in the mountains, this seems to say...
 Whole story: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2010/09/coyote-steals-fire-karuk-myth.html

Appetizer - Princeton MA

Ed Lenik Video

Larry Harrop writes:

I noticed that Ed Lenik is speaking at the upcoming NEARA conference. I know of one of his books "Picture rocks: American Indian rock art in the Northeast woodlands" so I searched his name hoping to find more on petroglyphs. Instead I came to this youtube video. How sad is that. Move the slider to 4 minutes into the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AflPXhooYa4

[PWAX: Lenik lumps together all researchers into New England stone structures. Apparently we all believe the Irish monks built everything (we don't). Also Lenik is unaware of USET resolutions.]

Sacred (Manitou?) Stone & Pikiavish

"Sacred rock -- Number: 194
-- Place: Merip, Yurok village --
Date: 1902 from:
http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/browse/ethBrowse/Native+Americans,+Yurok
(there's also: "Rockpile deposited by women," " Sacred rock 193," "Sacred rock near large pepper tree -- Number: 126 -- Place: At Weitchpec," and some landscape views like this below.)

On Klamath River. North side between Kepel and Meta Date: July, 1906
I'm guessing Peter has been here (at the website); see his post, "Rock piles for pikiavish ceremony - December 09, 2008"
http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2008/12/rock-piles-for-pikiavish.html

Pikiavish ("World Repairing") Ceremony at Inam Isivsanen Pikiavish is described in:
"Cry for luck: sacred song and speech among the Yurok, Hupa, and Karok" By Richard Keeling
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCa407GUaN8C&lpg=PA78&ots=CLbIzTxgXK&dq=pikiavish&pg=PA77#v=onepage&q=pikiavish&f=false
 Here's the word at wiki, including the "sift sand" part of it incorporated into the Karok word:
"The first of September brings a red-letter day in the Karok ephemeris, the great Dance of Propitiation, at which all the tribe are present, together with the deputations from the Yurok, the Hupa, and others. They call it sif-san-di pik-i-a-vish…which signifies, literally, "working the earth". The object of it is to propitiate the spirits of the earth and the forest, in order to prevent disastrous landslides, forest fires, earthquakes, drought, and other calamities" (28). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karuk

Red Flower by Nashoba Brook

Cardinal Flower

Klamath cairns - more "california fever"

From Bruce McAleer:

Here are 2 links you might like. I think you already have the second one.

http://escholarship.org/uc/item/99h4b4q7;jsessionid=84282DB296382BBB60C6FA44702D5C11

http://www.nps.gov/archive/crla/klritual.htm

Somewhere along the Klamath

Above is a photo Ron Smith sent me this morning
that shows a perched boulder Somewhere along the Klamath River in N. CA.

Where Have All the Boulders Gone?

 Rock walls like these are found in the Sutter Buttes and are thought to have been used

 as hunting blinds by local native tribes.

Photo by Daniel Barth.

http://www.sacredland.org/sutter-buttes/

 And:

Sutter Butte landscape boulders are a pleasing reddish brown granite covered in moss.

The moss gives the stones a long forgotten look as if they had been left ages ago.

SIZES: Various sizes from 18" to 60" in diameter.

http://www.bourgetbros.com/category_products.php?idcat=764

Desktop

About 2/3 of the way up from the base of this Brewerton point is a flake scar, running left to right, that seems to cross all the way from one side to the other. There is a bit of a flute at the base and I think these points are in a family with Clovis points.

Yurok Rock Pile

Yurok Language Project University of California, Berkeley Ha'ag 'U-Mekwehl.
Ha-'ag 'UeMe-kwehl.
Rock pile way up the hill above Moore's. (On the left side heading upriver.)

'O Ruu.
'O Ruue.
Meadow where they used to practice stick game, up the hill from rock pile. (On the right side heading upriver.)

http://corpus.linguistics.berkeley.edu/~yurok/web/YLCB.html

Rocks:


Pego’hpo: Translated “split.” A sea rock with a cleft in it.
(Below: Alfred Louis Kroeber photo of Rock Oregos
- and is that a rock line or stone row beside the path?)

 Wiyot and Yurok Tribal Cultural Resources Information
for Clam & Moonstone Beach County Parks Master Plan
 includes this info:
• The rock outcrops surrounding the village and the beach are traditional cultural places of ceremonial and spiritual significance to Yurok people and culture.
• The Culture Committee would like to see better management and protection of the village and resources in the Moonstone Beach area. Campers on the beach should not be allowed, trails leading into the village site should be closed, and visitors should be discouraged from climbing on the rock outcrops as these are cultural places.
http://co.humboldt.ca.us/portal/living/county_parks/clammoonstone/appendix%20c.pdf

Take a look at
"Burning a hillside" pg. 33
"Religion" -  rocks involved in ceremony pg. 53
Handbook of California Indians

Yurok is an Algonquian Language...

Point Reyes Walls

I guess we all have California fever, from visiting websites about the "Mystery Walls" of California. I was struck by this one (from here):

Walking toward the next stone, some quarter of a mile distant, I had time to examine the immediate landscape more closely. The more I looked the more amazed I became. I seemed to find traces of an ancient civilization everywhere. There were numerous places where stones from the field had been gathered together and piled into mounds, exactly like those ancient graves in the British Isles. Why had no archeologist every excavated this place?

Love to see some pics of those "mounds".

European megaliths compared to New England stone structures

From Chris:

...I have an interest in megalithic sites in Europe and am often intrigued by similarities between stone ruins there and stuff I come across here. I have attached some pictures I have taken in North Germany. There are lots of things in Germany similar to stonework here that I believe was built by Indians. You can find low ground piles that marked burials, cairns with hollows, stone chambers big and small, and propped boulders. I don't find any stone rows, prayer seats, split wedged boulders or other similar constructs. The biggest difference in Europe is the archaeology associated with these places. Excavations at these sites have yielded artifacts from different cultures in the Stone Age and Bronze Age. In addition to grave goods like pottery and finely worked flint tools, simple blades and other materials typical of habitation sites have been found. Without this archaeology, dating these European prehistoric sites would not have been possible.

("Totenhaus Tesperhude")

("Visbek Kellersteine")

One more batch of pictures from sites in Germany. I have also visited a number of sites made up of low earthen mounds. I believe that similar sites in New England would go completely unnoticed. The majority of megalithic sites I have seen in Germany were marked by signs visible from the road, even those on private property. Vandalism does not seem to be an issue at these places. Local people rake the leaves out from time to time. I wish we had a similar attitude towards archaeological sites.

ALF rock

Seeing pictures of ALF Rock on the Ron Smith website (Relics of the Ancients) , Norman Muller writes about the rock:

On that website from California are photos of a fascinating boulder with smaller rocks placed on top. These smaller rocks, possibly donations, are cemented in place! I assume they were fixed in place by the deposition of a mineral in solution washing over the stones over a very long period of time. You can see detail photos of the boulder and the smaller rocks by going to Ron's website (I sent you the link yesterday). ALF Rock is found in the Indians folder and under Crocodile Rock.

As a geologist, wouldn't you like to know what the cementing material is? And given the climate in this part of the U.S. wouldn't it be possible to figure out the rate of deposition? I would assume we're probably talking about millenia.
Herman Bender a geologist responds:

Some of the photos suggest that what we are looking at is exfoliation and differential weathering with moss or lichen covering parts of the weathered surface. If you look closely at these images, you can see that the gray color/texture is a weathered surface.
Norman then writes:

If you look at the images of Crocodile Rock, particularly the first one showing the eroded face of the rock, which has wave-like erosion at the bottom, just above that is a line of small stones eroding out. There is also a similar horizontal line of stones just below the top of ALF Rock (ALF Rock is in the same area as Crocodile Rock). I now believe that the rocks on top were an integral part of the boulder (a conglomerate), and that over time they became visible as the softer stone around them eroded away. Does this sound plausible?

Split Wedged Rocks - Kisacook Hill Westford

Frank Karkota writes:

I was exploring to the southwest of Kissacook Hill. Near a trail just northwest of the VFW field, I saw a large (10-12 feet diameter) boulder in the woods.The side was split from the boulder and I found a large (a foot long) piece of granite in the crack. It would not have been easy to drop the piece into the crack.