Feedback from Fenn Fieldtrip

 

 

Appetizer

One is Good, Two is Better

I shared a location (or at least thought I did) using Google Earth just a little while ago, pin pointing the location of a "Vee" shaped stone row that I thought might be a Game Run that I imagine could have been used like this:

(But the one in the GE capture is "linear," as I've come to describe non-zigzag stone rows)

Then I took a second look as I "backed up" to get the big picture and then, as plain as the face on my nose, I realize that there is a second "Vee" right by the "bordered on both sides by a stone row Indian Trail that has become (a still unpaved) modern road," there are remnants of another trail right by yet another "Vee:"

So I modify the old drawing:

(a modifcation of a Kieth Wilbur modification...:)

(...of a DeVry interpertation of Champlain's drawing:)

Quartz knife

     Yesterday I wanted to find a new place to look for Indian relics. A lot of open land isn't being used for much of anything this time of year, it can be a good time to knock on doors and ask permission to search private property that may be off limits at other times. My friend Dave identified a couple of likely places. On our way to the first spot we took a little detour to drive by a lake in an area where many stone tools were found long ago. Imagine our surprise to see a large area of exposed ground surface running right along a stream near where it flows into the lake! Such places are ideal for finding arrowheads. We searched it carefully but found not so much as a flake; perhaps development and the construction of a nearby road changed the appearance of this place since prehistoric times, or perhaps the people long ago simply preferred another area nearby, for whatever reason. We got back into the car and in the first place we wanted to search, there was no ground visible. The same was true in the next place as well, but a local guy we talked to told us of another place that he owned nearby, right on the river, that sounded just perfect. I raced there only to find that the swollen river has covered the area completely, it is under deep running water right now and I will come back to this place but there was no hope of finding anything there yesterday, certainly. With all my prospects exhausted I drove to a couple of favorite places but I have searched them so many times, there was just nothing left for me to find. It is disheartening to spend so much time looking, a whole day, and not find anything. The sky was pretty, though.

     Today I wanted to get out into the woods and look for stone vestiges of a different kind but a friend called and ask if we couldn't maybe go and look for arrowheads just for a little while, I reluctantly agreed and drove us to a favorite spot. It was cold and the wind was blowing right through my heavy jacket. We looked hard in an area where I have had some luck, but found only chips and flakes. We had just about given up when I decided to check one other spot where the conditions were not very good and where I haven't found very much in the past. I saw this:

    Usually when I see something like this it is just a flake but it could also be a fragment of a tool or even a nice arrowhead, there is no way to know until you pull it out of the ground. It's crude, it is very thick and chunky but it is a neat artifact and I am happy to have found it. It is about twice as thick as a typical projectile point in this size, and certainly does not look aerodynamic. I considered that maybe it could be a preform or an unfinished point that was discarded during manufacture. But the base, the hafting part with the weak shoulders, seems finished to me so I am calling it a knife.

     Here is the other side, cleaned up a bit.

     I didn't realize until I got home and put this with my other finds from this year but this material is much more gray and dark-colored than any other quartz point I have found. Smoky quartz, I would call it. Here it is compared to one I found earlier in the year, the common milky quartz material.

     There is no grinding on the stem on this one and I would call the shape Wading River, maybe 2,000-4,000 years old.

Cherokee Indian Grave

Photo by "Lisa," found at:

http://www.lisasphotoscapes.com/hdr-photography/churches-and-schools/old-stone-church-clemson-sc/

Photo from:

"The Hermit Cave; East Thompson, CT"  Posted on March 14, 2012 by Kent Spottswood

 ~ http://stonewings.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/the-hermit-cave-hot-house-cold-house-or-something-in-between/

Roger Williams' Indian Hothouses

via Syndey Blackwell:

Roger Williams excerpt:

“Pesuponck: An hothouse…This hothouse is a kind of little cell or cave, six or eight foot over, round, made on the side of a hill (commonly by some rivulet or brook.) Into this frequently the men enter after they have exceedingly heated it with store of wood, laid upon an heap of stones in the middle. When they have taken out the fire, the stones keep still a great heat. Ten, twelve, twenty, more or less, enter at once, stark naked, leaving their coats, small breeches (or aprons) at the door, with one to one to keep all. Here do they sit round these hot stones an hour or more, taking tobacco, discoursing, sweating together. Which sweating they use for two ends: to cleanse their skin; secondly, to purge their bodies, which doubtless is  a great means of preserving them and recovering them from diseases, especially from the French disease, which by sweating and some potions they perfectly and speedily cure. When they come forth (which is mater of admiration) I have seen them run,  summer and winter, into the brooks to cool them, without the least hurt.”

Roger Williams, Narragansett Bay, 1641 from

Indian New England, 1524-1674 A compendium of Eyewitness Accounts of Native American Life

Editor: Ronald Dale Karr, 1999

Rock Piles in New Brunswick

Reader Patricia Sullivan writes:

"...the rock piles out side. It is only two of them there is a lot more but could you look at it and maybe tell me what is it"

 

 

Wo'gas (California)

More amazing Alyssa Alexandria photos and text: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2013/03/wogas.html

Tinder for Thought

Where would you place this clam shell in the photo below?

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2013/03/three-photos-from-httprockpiles.html

A little remnant site at the Metropolitan State Hospital in Waltham

I grew up around here and we used to drive by the state asylum, which seemed kind of forbidding. But it is all city park now and I decided to go walking there two weekends ago, south and east from here, in order to avoid the thicker snow to the north and west. Amazingly there are still things to find. 

Most of the Water Tank Hill has been thoroughly terraced and thoroughly trashed out, but climbing down the western side, I thought I saw a minimal rock pile and hesitated.

Then another and gained some confidence:

And then was convinced with this third "best" rock pile:

Then I saw a curious little structure looking out over a vernal pond there. By itself, this would have been enough to tip the scales of conviction that this was a site. What do you make of this?

 

There was a little aperture (speaking of apertures):

 Here is the view outward:

A moment later, as I headed off the hill in a northerly direction crossing a bit of a northeastern shoulder, I saw something else:

How about that? Structures still there in modern Waltham.

Stone Rows with Apertures

Sydney Blackwell writes:

Are rows with apertures common, like the one in this first image that shows the top of an average-height stone row? 

The second image shows the top rock from the other side—all quartz on top.

There is another piece of quartz on this same row. 

The Distribution of Rock Pile Sites in the Eastern US

Curtis Hoffman writes:

This is a schematic map of the over 3,300 stone sites currently in my database, in 100 km blocks using the UTMs for boundaries.  Note the clear separation between the Southeast and Northeast data, and also the absence of sites on the coastal plain from Georgia to Delaware.  More data is coming in, so this shouldn’t be considered final – but it does give you an idea of how the sites are distributed.

"Vee"

I've been looking for this "Vee" photo for a while now. It relates to this post: http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2013/02/stone-wall-and-suzanne-wall.html
Another two views of the same:

It might be a "game run."

I added this aerial view: http://binged.it/YBUkba

Other stuff nearby on the northern end of the Fleming Preserve (part of Flanders Nature Center):

turtle and...

buzzard/turkey vulture effigy: