Crystal Springs - wherein Peter explores an old site, takes pictures, goes back the next weekend and falls off a cliff

Crystal Springs in Groton is a conservation land just east of the Wharton Tree Plantation, whose broad valleys contain many rectangular mounds with hollows, in many different sizes and styles and many different degrees of decrepitude (a place where chronological ordering might be possible based on pile damage).
A few weekends ago, I went in there hoping to explore from the east and headed as far to the right (north) as I could go, expecting to loop back around on the way back. Things got interesting after I got to a dirt road called "Blood Rd" on some maps. A few steps along it, hopped over the wall, and I saw a short spur leading to this rock with a collection of old bricks:

Continuing along that outcrop, a pile:

and an unusual fern, the ebony-spleenwort:

 

Then I started seeing more piles:

These are new to me, since I have not been in that part of the woods. But they are like what you find more to the west. The woods here are full of faint traces:

 and nice piles.

After a while, heading north, I hit houses, and turned west and hit open fields. I saw a grid there (poor photos):

And it is never hard, in this area, to find old-style graves built against boulders:

Obviously there has been some modern interactions there:

So, pretty cool all in all. 

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I went back with my wife the next weekend and ended by seeing quite a lot less. I did connect through to places I recognized west of Crystal Springs, but the main excitement was showing off for my wife about how easy it is to jump down a cliff if you hold a tree like a rope. But I made a critical mistake, grabbing a branch rather than the main trunk: I felt the roots start to go and thought it was alright to execute a spin along with the jump. Then the foolishness of grabbing a branch caught up with me as I torqued the poor sucker into snapping. Down the cliff I went - maybe 15 to 20 feet on a smooth, perhaps 80 degree slope of granite. Rolled, bounced twice, ended up at the foot of the rock slightly dazed with a cut hand. I seemed to have hurt nothing. Looking around, I knew the spot - a place along the Crystal Springs trail.

Quanopaug Trail Rock Pile

(Actually, I meant to say "Quanopaug Trail," or the trail which is still mostly bordered on both sides by stone rows, some zigzag, that leads to Quanopaug Falls - the roaring water - according to William Cothren, who claims Orenaug means the sunny place.)

A Large Boulder by the stream, a sort of terrace-like stone row with a rock pile above...

I'm looking east...

Pink Quartzite?

Looking West:

Too lazy to blog

REMINDER: Friday Lecture on rock piles

Don't forget, I'll be speaking at the (Town of) Harvard Library, on Friday at 7:30.

The Adena moved east

From Sydney Blackwell:

Science Times: Oct. 15, 2013

A Maryland Hill’s Prehistoric Secret

By THEO EMERY

“The discoveries led some anthropologists to conclude that people from the Adena and Hopewell cultures had migrated from the Ohio Valley to the Chesapeake region, even though their burial mounds have never been found in the area.”

Aboriginal Rock Alignment in the Toiyabe Range

Nevada "stone alignments" for hunting purposes (with a link to the PDF): 

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2013/10/an-aboriginal-rock-alignment-in-toiyabe.html

Grizzly Stone Pile

From Folklore of Mount Shasta:

 "That is why the Indians about Mount Shasta will never kill or interfere in any way with a grizzly. Whenever one of their number is killed by one of these kings of the forest, he is burned on the spot, and all who pass that way for years cast a stone on the place till a great pile is thrown up." - http://www.siskiyous.edu/shasta/fol/nat/grizzly.htm

     Related Post: http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2011/09/story-of-mound-by-john-muir.html

"Region's rocky landscape offers rich lode of history" - From The Day [Connecticut]

via Ted Hendrickson:

http://www.theday.com/article/20131014/NWS01/310149950/-1/nws

NEARA Fall Conference in Springfield MA

Peter Anick of NEARA writes:

A friendly reminder that the fall Neara conference in Springfield, MA is just two weeks away.  While you are welcome to register on site, it helps our planning if you register in advance (especially if you are interested in the banquet).  Talks on the distribution of northeastern stone sites, a prehistoric stone fish dam, runestone analysis, Native American spirituality and archaeology, Nasca lines, stone circles, plus updates on local research and events.  Field trips Friday afternoon and Sunday morning.  Invite your friends and spread the word on facebook (Neara is on facebook now as well). 

The full program is available on the web site www.neara.org.  Note that daily registration is possible if you can't make the whole weekend.

Shawnee History

From People of One Fire:
http://www.examiner.com/article/will-the-real-shawnee-history-please-stand-up

Ebony Spleenwort

...why you devil!

 (It is not too common but here it is at Crystal Springs in Groton.)

A more common Polypody for comparison:

A quick tour at the Rubin (Indian Meadow) Conservation Land in Boxborough

I was here long ago but missed the things seen by reader b. downing.  Egged on by his report, I went for another look and, as he said: some large messy indistinct platforms at the end of the red trail. This was the edge of an orchard, 

Were these just from field clearing? Here is a first one, rectangular and messy, part way out the spit of land:

This ones had a couple of possible niches:

 Or is this a "hollow"?

Onward.

There was a second one at the north end of the higher ground before the swamp:

 

It had a bit of structure:

In the end these might be my old friends: rectangles with hollows, but they could have been dumped from the orchard. Still not sure. So I headed north, clockwise around the swamp. 

Here is a beautiful split-wedged rock:

I saw a few other odds and ends: a rock-on-rock, a gateway pile. But the best reward came 3/4 of the way around, just behind 343 Sargent Rd. This one is more clearly rectangular and more clearly undisturbed:

Note the lower portion to the left - which I think is equivalent to the"tail" that appears on some other piles.

Harvard Town Newspaper - prep'ing the Friday night talk.

Sorry if this is too much "me...me....me" but this article contains some worthwhile information about the upcoming talk. Click Here.
Talk was announced on this blog here.

Rock piles at the Sanders Preserve in Glenville NY, County of Schenectady

Craig , a Friend of a friend writes:
These piles are located in the Sanders Preserve in Glenville NY, County of Schenectady. It is land once owned by the Glen Sanders family, the first European family to build a home north of the Mohawk River. That was in 1635. I have tried to find just when they first owned the land, but to no avail. The family owned this 370 acre piece of property the whole time, until the Town of Glenville was able to acquire it, and make it a preserve. When I approach someone who is someone in the town, and mention these piles, the first response is "oh, the farmers field stones".

The preserve is broken up into 3 zones. I have just recently gone into Zone 3, and found 23 more piles, of which these five in the pics are a part of. My partner and I will go in there after the leaves fall, and GPS plot what we find. I have done so with what we found in the other two zones. These GPS plots would dash anyones idea of farmers fieldstones, as the placement of them is seemingly random, and no farmer would try to plow straight furrows between them. The five pics I have sent are all within eyeshot of each other, and are situated at the head of the Whitetail Creek. With the other two zones, it brings to a total of just a little less or a little more than 80 piles. Some of the piles are little more than a gathering of rocks at ground level. These five I sent to you are some of the largest. There is one I have seen from a distance that I consider very large. What might be deemed a platform rock.

I also, in zone 3, have found what may be effigy piles. The last one in this series I sent may be a turtle effigy. I only saw this after looking at the pics. I did not see the legs, and head, until I uploaded and viewed them. I have found no others in the other two zones that I would call an effigy. There may be two other effigy piles in Zone 3.

"Discovering Native Amerian Stone Stuctures in the Massachusetts Woods" - a talk by Peter Waksman at the Town of Harvard Library - Oct 18, 7:30 PM

More info later. If you are in the vicinity, please come listen. I'll show slides and tell stories.

This is one of several things that are distracting me from blogging - sorry about the sparse posting.

Terracing and cairns (back in Fitchburg, near Richardson Rd)

Just a note that I saw some faint terracing on the east face of the hill east of Richardson Rd.

It all looked somewhat trashed out and "farm"-y but after ignoring the terracing for a while I came across some smeared out rock piles I found harder to ignore.

Since I wrote about it here (about a Bush Hill Rd site next to a brook) I have wanting to mention the similarity of those piles with these - "triangular, or rectangular, with one white rock".

This was all within the larger blue outline on the map fragment. I found the faintest of traces of larger mounds with hollows down along the brook - about where the smaller blue outline is on the map.

Wedge-Shaped Formation

Sydney Blackwell writes:
I’ve attached pictures of the large wedge-shaped formation I mentioned and two similar constructions near it. The wedge rock in the stand-alone small construction (image 1242) is lined with quartz on its left underside. 

Mounds with square holes - New Brunswick CA

Reader Steve W: writes:
I've found two sets of mounds of rocks. each set has one mound that has a square hole in the center.  each set of mounds, the one with the hole in the center, has a corner that seems to face north. these mounds are on the Kingston peninsula, new Brunswick, canada

Maya Influence

Maya Maize God

Some thoughts about Maya Influence: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2013/09/maya-influence.html

Interpretive Pictures of Track Rock Gap

From the "People of One Fire", pursuing a Mayan view for this site in Georgia:

Native American volunteers accomplish what the Feds couldn't

From the Examiner.com via Norman Muller:
click here

The best of NEMBA Vietnam 2

I have started to be impressed with the idea that one type of rock pile site played a role in defining a pathway. Places like this show where the impression comes from:

Viewed from above and below. [A bit like here.]