Broken quartz rules everything around me

     I would rather find one nice arrowhead, in an interesting shape, made of an unusual material, than a whole pile of broken quartz arrowhead fragments.
     But, I would rather find a broken corner of a triangular quartz arrowhead, than search all day and go home empty-handed. So when I can, I like to go to those places that are productive and where I have the best chances of finding an artifact.
     Lately that has meant going to a place where I find a lot of broken quartz arrowhead fragments. Here are the results from a walk after work.

     That piece at the far left is one corner of a huge triangular point. There are some broken triangular arrowheads, some crude stuff that might be preforms or scrapers. This stemmed base was a heartbreaker, it was a big point and I do not find many in this shape at this site.

     This Squibnocket Triangle has nice flaking on one edge (left side) but the other edge is more crude, I'm not sure if this was resharpened, damaged, made that way?

     This was the most intact of the points from that evening. Rather crudely made.

     It's really thick. Probably used as a knife, I guess.

     I went back to that place this morning before work. The warm air felt nice, I only had around 20 minutes to search and it rained the whole time but it was worth it. I spotted this and took one (blurry) photo before I picked it up. Lots of slugs on the ground out there today.

     It's a tiny Squibnocket Triangle missing the tip. It's really thin and nicely flaked. It is flaked on one side only, flat and smooth on the other- carefully crafted from a quartz flake. I only have a very few unifacially flaked quartz triangles like this and they are all small. Some call these "bird points" but I don't know if anyone really knows the purpose of these smallest projectile points. Here it is cleaned up with another find from this morning, I have a number of roughly chipped artifacts in this same shape- I think they are scrapers.

     The place where I found these is small. There's a little hill next to a stream. The hilltop, the slope, and a small flat area at the base of the hill next to the stream are covered with quartz chips. I have found very many triangular quartz arrowheads there, a few small stemmed types (Wading River, Squibnocket Stemmed), some Levanna triangles. I found a Brewerton base, a fragment of a bannerstone, a pottery fragment, tantalizing fragments of large points made of different materials including flint. I think the debitage there is 99 percent quartz, very rarely I find a flake of argillite, black/white rhyolite or red felsite. The hammer stones must be there, probably I pick them up and drop them without recognizing them. I don't know if families lived there, maybe it was a fishing camp, perhaps this site was used in different ways at different times?

More on rock pile half-life and site classification and chronology

Speaking (here) of damaged rock piles and estimating site age by the amount of the damage, or the proportion of damaged piles at the site (something I called rock pile half-life in these articles [you need to scroll down]), it is not such a crazy idea when construed statistically over a wide number of similar sites in a restricted region like east central Massachusetts. Take, for example, marker pile sites with triangular rock piles of which we have many examples, enough to comprise a legitimate statistical sample. And suppose, reasonably, that these are manifestations of a culture that existed in a limited part of the past - a time frame whose limits we want to estimate - or at least place in chronological order with other types of sites. It is certainly true that individual sites will have experienced different amounts of damage depending on later land use. If they were in an open field (I am thinking Manana Island) they might not get too quickly damaged. If they were subject to falling branches and trees, they might be more damaged. But over a large sample of sites the local differences in land use would average out in a restricted region. If you had a reasonable sample size for a different type of site, these same local variabilities would apply to them. To make a long story short: If over a collection of sites of one type there is more damage (on average) than for a collection sites of another type; then it is perfectly reasonable to conclude the more damaged sites are older. In this regard, there is no question that rock piles with hollows are significantly older than triangular rock piles.

I can almost create chronology now for these different types of rock piles:

• piles with hollows and tails
• piles with hollows and no tails
• piles with hollows, no tails, and in proximity to "ski-jump" shaped piles, evenly spaced and in lines.
• Evenly spaced triangular rock piles in lines and grids - with viewing platform or high point.

I like visual representations:For what it is worth these are also sort of regional:

• Rock piles with hollows and tails (A) are from Carlisle to northern Fitchburg.
• Rock piles with hollows and no tails (B) are from Leominster to Boylston to Hopkinton
• Rock piles with hollows and outlying ski jumps (C) are from Upton to Holliston
• Triangular rock piles (D) are pretty much everywhere.
  

I wonder how much of this is actually correct?

Another week, another marker pile site with triangular rock piles

Coming up to a site, often I see rock-on-rocks like bastions at the gate.And a few steps later I start seeing rock piles.You can see the piles as hints of darker color in the ferns. And you can see the "grid-like" structure. This was a typical site of this type with water to north, and northwest. The site consisted of several clusters of piles. A stone wall separated these from a small peninsula sticking out into a brook, and there were a few larger more broken down piles on the peninsula, like an older site over in there.I walked around taking pictures of the rock piles and was particularly enamored of this one: Let's look at it from above:See? It is triangular. Some others:The presence of one larger rock on each of these piles may be significant. I have been finding rock pile sites with triangular rock piles this fall. It is funny how I seem to find the same kinds of rock piles over and over for a while and then I start finding some other kind of site and get into seeing those over and over. What would explain this impression? I do tend to keep exploring in the same places once I find good stuff there. But this is northern Westford, and I just saw the same things in Fitchburg along Falulah Brook, and in Foxboro at the state forest. So I don't get it. Last spring it was all about rock piles with hollows and, frankly I enjoyed them so much this is what I have been hunting for. But now I just keep finding triangular rock piles. Over by a stone wall, a different collection of piles. The layout of the piles, evenly spaced along an arc, is evident enough:Just to the right in this picture was one pile that was different from all the rest: a broken down platform? Or could it be my old friend: a rock piles with hollows? I don't know, it was too far gone. It would have been like a focal point to the arc of the other piles.

Here are some of the "older" piles, on the peninsula:These are long gone.

A weekend of small triangular ground piles (some with quartz)

I've written about small triangular piles several times (see here and here) Sometimes there is a piece of quartz in the pile and sometimes it is at one of the corners of the triangle. So last weekend, I found some in Shirley on Kezar Hill and also in Upton Conservation Land near Grafton. The impression is that not only are these type of piles widespread, they also seem to be fairly old and are among the most decrepit piles that still have some recognizable features.

Last weekend, in Shirley, I went a looking: first down slope to the west of Garrison Rd, then over at the top of the gully running up the northeast side of the hil. Finally I went back to the "V" between Garrison Rd and Townsend Rd to take another look at the piles I know from other there.

I'll just show you one pile from within that "V":

You see a straight line of rocks on the right edge of the pile. Also a piece of quartz near the rear. I am extrapolating to the rest of this pile when I call it "triangular", but I think the triangular shape is pretty clear on these next examples from the Warren Brook area of Upton:

(It may take a moment to see this)

Maybe this one is a stretch but it still looks like a triangle:

 a detail:

Does it make the case? I know how to measure the "triangularity" but I am hoping it's not necessary. You can see the shape plain enough, can't you?
Here are a couple classics, from Blood Hill, Ashby:

 and Patch Hill Boxboro:

Triangular structures - from Norman Muller

Norman writes:
"...mentioned a triangular structure in the cairn that Larry found, and that reminded me of a triangular fill of stones I saw in S. Newfane, VT, and how this is reflected in the triangular stone placed on top. See the attached. The triangle can also have female symbolism."

Insomnia, site classification, and a wetland's edge in Carlilse

Can't sleep, I find myself thinking about the sites I looked at over the last several weekends. I am falling into the habit of making a longer drive to explore far from home on one of the weekend days but making a shorter drive to explore somewhere near to home on the other day. This has had me exploring far away in Sterling and also near to home in Carlisle for several weekends in a row. I am seeing different types of rock pile sites in both places but, by coincidence, there have been some interesting parallels between the sites in both places. So one weekend I am at a cellar hole in Carlisle and the next I am at a cellar hole in Sterling. One day I am looking at rock piles clustered along a wetland's edge in Sterling and the next day I am at the same kind of place in Carlisle. And this helps me notice similarities that I would probably miss otherwise - if the observations had not happed so closely together in time to make the connection.

So I just reported on a site in Sterling at the headwaters of Rocky Brook where I noticed a few things that might barely be noteworthy:

• small rock piles clustered along the edge of a wetland
• at the headwaters of a brook
• split rocks
• an elongated triangular shaped rock-on-rock

These features would not naturally jump out as particularly noteworthy or significant in their coincidence, except that I saw the same things together the next day in Carlisle. Having driven to Sterling the day before, now I was near home up at the north end of Two Rod Road [Two old dirt roads run north south through Estabrook Woods; one to the west called Estabrook Road and one to the East called Two Rod Road. Kibbe's place from two weekends ago was on Estabrook Rd.]; and exploring near the "Malcolm Meadow" conservation land, and I headed off in a new direction into the woods, to explore along the very northernmost fringes of the large wetland there. Maybe this is the northern fringe of Yellow Birch Swamp but I think it might, instead, be called the "Great Carlisle Swamp". Anyway, it was wet and soggy and I had the most abysmal brook crossing possible: taking a hard fall in the middle of the brook. This threw me off a bit but I was taking some nice pictures in the drizzle.

Here was a magnificent split wedged rock:Then after my fall I spotted a rock pile and...away we go. I photo'd this little combination:
Had I not just last night been blogging about "elongated triangles" I would not have noticed that the upper rock in the picture is the same triangular shape. Maybe I am just imaging that this is significant.

Here are two rock piles in the ferns, at the wetland's edge:The near pile had a very interesting and distinct feature (and not something I saw in Sterling). It had a vertical "fin".(Further away)I see these finned rock piles occasionally. I am remembering one I saw at the Conant Land in Carlisle a while ago, also at a wetland's edge.

What a beatiful spot with the piles in the ferns:Most of the piles, unlike these visible ones, were so low and covered with dead leaves that you had to step on them before you noticed them. I started a bit west of the northernmost edge of the wetland but worked my way around to the eastern side, and stopped seeing piles. But I continued southward on the eastern side of that swamp (hey how about a map fragment?)
After not seeing much I did see one quite different type of rock pile: a larger oval mound, completely buried, perhaps ten feet long:A trail and a couple of long boardwalks took me back across to the western side of the swamp, then north and back to my car where (not atypically) the police were waiting to snarl at me about where I parked.

But let's come back to that first cluster of piles on the northwestern extreme of the swamp and some characteristics:

• a wedged rock
• small piles clustered along a wetland's edge
• an elongated triangular shaped rock-on-rock (propped up at an angle)
• a finned pile

You'll have noticed that this is largely the same list of features I wrote down above for the Rocky Brook site in Sterling. This similarity in features is the basis for thinking these sites are examples of the same thing, the same type of rock piles site: A type of ceremonial site occurring at a wetland's edge. But more than just this nice little comparison one can see the outlines of a methodology that might be useful and might not rely on noticing similarities only because they are seen on adjacent days of a weekend. Namely: listing the observed features and keeping track of such lists. I am probably too lazy to do it but it makes sense to try. Because there are things that would not seem particularly noteworthy but if you wrote them down, made a collection of feature lists, and occasionally took the lists out to examine them for similarities, would help to see subtle similarities that you would miss otherwise. For me, I would not have thought those elongated triangular shapes would be significant; and perhaps they are not. But I am definitely going to keep track of that pattern and notice it, even look for it, in the future.

So I think we are making some progress towards recognizing certain basic site types. Let me list the ones I can think of and let me work on tidying up the ideas over time - eliminating them, modifying them, so to speak: savoring them. I don't know to what extent these classifications are real or generalizable outside of my Eastern Massachusetts/ Middlesex County sampling territory.

Wetland's Edge Sites - sites with small piles clustered along a water's edge, etc.

Monumental Pile Sites - big rock piles and short stretches of stone wall, mixed with smaller piles; all with a sense of overall site organization and layout.

Cellar Hole Sites - with piles on boulders around a cellar hole and pile-gap-pile features.

Marker Pile Sites - with piles evenly spaced and somewhat in lines. Some piles with vertical sides, etc.

"Burial Pile" Sites - sites with low circular ground piles not in any pattern, having one or two pieces of light rock (usually quartz), with a few piles built on boulders near the edges of the group.

I do not know where effigy rock piles fit into this, they might be mostly a feature of the wetland's edge sites and I failed to see that perspective last weekend. That big oval pile on the western side of the Carlisle swamp was something different again. I have seen things like that in a few other places but they are not part of a more comprehensive feature list; not that I can describe anyway. It seems to me there may be some merit to writing down these feature lists, or at least thinking about them collectively when looking at a site. It makes sense to include topography and other landscape features in the list. There may be some merit to writing down minor observations - since they may turn out to correlate with other sites, but you wouldn't notice, you wouldn't remember where you saw that before. All of which may, in the long run, help to get a sense of the different uses and different cultures that left these rock piles in the woods.

Cold Spring creek branch - Arctic China State Forest, NY

by theseventhgeneration
Hiking along a logging road, then the Finger Lakes trail, I spotted a small rock pile embedded in a steep bank overlooking the creek. The top two rocks are a small rectangle set on a larger square, if viewed from above.After following a few more (similarly embedded in the bank) rock piles, this one stood out for a perfect photo op:Looking at that same pile, down from above it, I couldn't adjust the light properly because I'm working with two broken cameras, but this gives a good concept of the grade.Just above this rock pile, along the ridge, there are several ground piles that are not so obvious. At first I thought maybe they marked the edge of a field. There were only a few. I followed a row a short distance into plantation pines, and they ended.

Keeping up with the creek, at a bend I found two vertical stones in an arrangement I've seen before (here and here). The half meter stick is in the photos.Note the small triangular stone at the base in this photo:The drop down to creek is in the background of this picture. I added a black line, so the triangular rock would be visible.The creek is to my back here. The tip of the triangular rock is just barely visible at the top, in the center.Just above a split in the creek, this was one of the last rock piles I found. It is just below a small, flat swampy area of the creek. This view is looking downstream.

Hunting for rock piles, from southern Estabrook, over to Boaz Brown's

See map in previous post. A brook called "Dakins Brook" leads up past Farmer's Cliff and begins in a valley just shy of "Mink Pond". Please note this valley and the higher ground to the west which is where Boaz Brown's cellar hole is found (on a path 100 yards east of Hugh Cargill Rd.). That valley and land form have more rock piles sites than anywhere else in Concord. There are what I consider to be burial mounds up on the ridge (rectangular, more than 8 feet across, with hollows), and some very nice piles down in the valley, that are a bit unique. 
I have been to these places before but, even without that, exploring a ridge west of a headwaters is a good hunting strategy. Last Sunday, I wanted to take a walk near home, and went out with my wife, and followed that strategy, around the edges of the open "private" land and roads. So I ended up walking along the edge of that ridge: I mean here:

We got up on the ridge slightly south of where the good stuff starts (not realizing where we were) and I saw a couple of structures that were new:

I cannot make out much from these. You will have to look quite closely to see how the above is slightly rectangular, with a space to the left of the larger rock (a "lazy 9". Below, you can see two hollows in the structure, but I do not trust it. It is so degenerate.

I guess they are older structures. Overall, there are about six mounds, possibly burials, up on that northern piece of the above map. 
Then we came to a "real" rock pile:

I started wondering if we were over at Boaz Brown's. We were. And there are all kinds of peculiar rock piles on bedrock, along with short stretches of stone wall. Enough to make you wonder, what was Boaz Brown up to?

Here are two holes, that must be the "cellars":

Since the above rock piles are rather unusual and in the context of a historic period home, it is easy to suppose they are not Indian and not ceremonial.

However the visibility into the undergrowth was very good. It was cloudy, these woods are sparse, and I spotted something new. This seems undeniably ceremonial. It is a triangle:

 And it has a white blaze:

 It is a light tan feldspar:

Triangular mounds are rare. I know one in Wayland and one in Sterling (the one in Wayland is bigger, likely different).

Here is the trail in from Hugh Cargill Rd:

The triangular mound is immediately to the left in the saplings. The cellar holes are a few steps later on the right, and the other piles continue to the left. So Boaz Brown was looking out at this triangular mound from his front door. He knew it was there.