A Bend in Elizabeth Brook - Stow MA

A somewhat silly video but of a beautiful spot. I am not used to slopes dropping cleanly off towards water with rock piles.

Blogger software acting up

Lately all the images I post don't act as links to themselves but to a file/attachment download dialog. Apparently this is a known new bug in the blog publishing software, and they are working on it. Hopefully it will get fixed soon.

Odds and ends in the Harvard Woods

This is out northeast of the horse meadows - an area full of interesting stonework. A curious little structure, probably broken: Another view:How about this. It sure looks man made:I came across what looked like a little one-person room made against a stone wall from rocks borrowed from the wall. I guess you could roof this with branches although there was no sign that anyone had.And others:There are some ponds or lobes of one pond back in there with bedrock ridges separating the lobes. In one place a wall follows the bedrock ridge towards the water, then ends but a smidgeon of it continues as a small rock pile in one place and a perched arrangement at the very end. Here is how the ridge ends, embelished with placed rocks:
Here is a closeup of that last arrangement:
And then, short stretches of stone wall, are getting very familiar. This one ends in a standing stone.

This blog get's mentioned

Looks like the quality of Norman's work is creating visibility for this blog [Click here]

See also this article on the Hammonasett Line [Click here]

The Stow Grid

I went out and tried to make a map. This is qualitative and not accurate: lines drawn between piles represent lines of sight I actually saw along. Numbers next to the lines are distances in paces. Magnetic compass directions are given for some of the lines. One reason for posting such a picture is to see if someone with accurate surveying skills might be tempted to come do the job right.
I spent a few minutes with FFC looking at this with his "Stupid Sheet" and none of the directions quite came out right. Of course the horizon is not flat here, it is a steep southwest-facing side of a hill in Stow, MA

Rhinebeck Cairns Experiential - a video about a cairn site

Some very impressive mounds made of stone. This is from reader Ji and her colleagues.
[Click here]

Welsh Rock Piles

Geophile

A couple of nice pictures of rock piles in Wales: one, two.

Modoc Indian Prayer

by JimP
"My good helper, stone pile, you give me good luck. I am going out to hunt now. I give you this [stone]. Help me to have good luck hunting deer. This is what I want you to do." (Ramsey 1977:186)

RAMSEY, Jarold. 1977. Coyote Was Going There: Indian Literature of the Oregon Country. Modoc Prayers. Seattle; London: University of Washington Press.

Photo: "Indian Post Office," along the Lolo Trail in the Bitterroot Mountains. Taken by Ed Brenegar - Link

Were marker pile sites built all at once?

A couple of conversations recently caused me to think more about whether the "plan" that one sees at a marker pile/grid site was created by a single planner or by a group of people, possibly at different times. On the face of it, a single plan suggests a single planner. But I have been challenged to re-think this and some other possibilities include: different planners at different times adding to a site, or people at roughly the same time all following the same principles. I do not like the second possibility as it would be more likely to create a site with visible non-uniformities. But then I start thinking about some of the sites I have seen and realize that some have different parts - the Ashland sites I visited last winter (click here and if you have a moment, watch the videos) seemed to include multiple centers with radiating lines of rock piles, and there is no reason not to imagine different people constructing the sites areound different centers. Then last weekend at that "old favorite" site in Stow, there look to be a patchwork of grids, with a couple of piles sitting between patches and being part of more than one grid. This again is a non-uniformity at a single site allow for the possibility of different builders. Then this weekend, I saw something suggesting the site had been used for a long time and added to by different people. At first (I imagine) the bedrock outcrops lined up in a desirable way. After that lines of rock piles, more or less evenly space, were built in parallel (but not quite) with the line of the outcrops. Still later other lines of piles were added; so that today, when I explore, I can see fresh piles in good shape forming lines, side by side with other lines made from piles so old as to be entirely buried in the soil - almost indestinguishable from the outcrops. This picture does not do it justice (these sites are hard to photo) but it shows two parallel lines of piles: the closest pile and the next one are on a line that slants off to the upper right. A little behind and to the left of that line you can see a second line parallel to the first - there is kind of a ridge there of buried rock piles.

Standing stones from Larry Harrop

Larry Harrop photos....you go look: [Click here]

Panorama Shots of an old favorite rock pile site in Stow MA

A reason for showing all these views, similar though they are, is that each one shows a slightly different angle. If you look at them long enough to figure out which piles show up again in which pictures, then you can start to make out a patchwork of grids.

Stone Walls, Squannacook Hill - Shirely MA

I have been trying to get in to this hill for a while. Finally figured out how to get in there but I did not see much except the stone walls that I had expected based on the old Fort Devens Topo map (click here).
Saw this short stretch.
But then it turned out to be lined up with a more extended wall a few hundred yards away, as if a separate section. Here is this more extended wall:

A small but noisy rocking stone

Old NEARA web page articles

Have you seen these lately? They are the first few "issues" of the NEARA web page I did. Note the authors of the online articles. The cast of characters has grown since then.

http://www.neara.org/index0.html

http://www.neara.org/index1.html
http://www.neara.org/index2.html
http://www.neara.org/index4.html
etc...

Cairn site in Stockbrige VT

Norman Muller writes:

I wrote a web article about the Stockbridge cairn site, which you can access here:

http://www.rock-piles.com/stockbridge.

Cairns and Stone Circles threatened by mining plan in North Dakota

"Coteau's mining plan does take steps to balance cultural resources against the rights of the minerals owners to have their coal mined. Coteau will mine around some 15 cultural sites, which include multiple features and are eligible for listing on the National Historic Register.

Once reclamation is completed around those sites -- years from now -- the approximate 1,700 acres will be preserved in a first-ever perpetual land trust. Cultural features that will be preserved include 327 stone rings, 93 stone cairns, 11 stone alignments, a turtle effigy and an unmarked burial." [Click here]

Gotland Viking Island

Legendary grave field with 350 graves consisting of stone cairns, stone circles and stone ships. [Click here and scroll down]

The Ungava Stone Cairns

[Click here]

The Carlisle MA town boundary pile

This is said to be marking a boundary (corner?) for Carlisle but I believe it is a bit much for such a humble purpose. Also this is one of several very large rock piles from only this one part of Carlisle (near South and Cross Streets).The other large piles are not on any town boundary.

I have shown this pile before on this blog. Going back to visit it, there is a lot of internal structure visible. The upper edge of the pile has a curved concave shape, there is what appears to be an "on ramp", and there is some sense of multi-levels and other structure.

Stone lined springs

I saw these two examples on two consecutive days. They looked similar. The first is from the top of the gully at Mt. Pisgah. There was a hint of an old road coming down to this spot. Following it back uphill leads to the "Berlin Rd" and an old house foundation. Was this stone work done by the same hands as some of the rock piles downstream? Here is another. It is next to a driveway in Carlisle, near Fielding Farm Rd.