Next to a swamp behind a school in Littleton, MA

by PWAX
I found these small supported piles at one spot near the edge of a wetland:
(view to the north)
(view west)The site is pretty badly damaged with some piles almost totally buried. The wetland is beyond the wall. These are a bit effigy-like but who knows - with the damage?
Then I followed the edge of the wetland, across a different wall, and found this very large pile:
In this view there is a hint of inner structure where the trees are growing from the middle of the pile.Are these piles from field clearing? The piles in the first cluster are delicate little structures so: no, they are not from a farm clearing. But it is harder to dismiss the possible farm relation to this big pile. But observe the size of the rocks to be large and relatively uniform. The hint of "inner chamber" structure is consistent with this being an old damaged mound - much like what we see in the hills of Leominster.

In the end, I guess the damage is what is farm related. One last piece of evidence. This picture of the large pile from a distance shows a small pile in the foreground made from the same sized rocks as the large pile. This indicates site structure.

Connectedness

by Tim MacSweeney

Some thoughts on "Connectedness," including a link to someone else's thoughts on the same subject that I found at the Algonquian Confederacy of the Quinnipiac Tribal Council website I found yesterday: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2008/04/connectedness.html.

(The image used above is from a Wikipedia page about Charles Mann's "1491":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus.
The caption to it reads: "An indicative map of the prominent political entities extant in the Western Hemisphere c. 1491 C.E., as presented in 1491.")

Piles along Beaver Brook, seen from the Hartwell Reserve Conservation Land - Littleton, MA

Just a few pics. Not a very big concentrated site, spread out along the north side of Beaver Brook. A little like the site along Elizabeth Brook in Stow.

There are also lots of rock-on-rocks on this hill. Many with what look like curiously shaped upper rocks, with Manitou stones propped up or on top of rocks being common. I don't know if this "saucepan / boat rudder" shape is a manitou stone or not. Here is a propped up one:

Sudbury State Forest - a knoll at the confluence of brooks

I got into the woods a differet way, thinking I was exploring a new place and was overjoyed to walk right up to the rock piles. Later I realized this is a site I have seen before. So I'll just post a couple of pictures to give a feel for the place:
The location near a brook confluence with a view to the south is typical. These are old beat up piles a bit like the ones from the Berlin hilltop. No sign of structure, just old medium sized ground piles. No quartz.And a sense of the pile density on this knoll. There were perhaps 10 piles in all:And a last look back up the knoll from the direction of the brook:
A nice little site and it is always good to walk directly up to the rock piles. Compare with other "knoll+brook" [Click here]

Brook confluence - Sudbury State Forest

Interesting structure from Sudbury State Forest

This consists of a boulder with two short stretches of stone wall to one side, one stretch slightly curved and touching the boulder, the other like a continuation of the first but offset at a slightly different angle:
The secondary stretch is not visible in the photo above. Here it is, a slightly lower row of piled rocks:And here is a view back towards the boulder from the far end of the secondary stretch:

Video of the curve of rock piles from a high hill in Berlin, MA

The site is described in more detail here.

Looking towards the Wachusett Reservoir from a High Hill in Berlin, MA

I started up a steep little hill, legs aching, and thought I should get over to the western side of the summit where there was a nice view. That is where the rock piles were, including several rectangular and level "platforms" facing outward and a curious little curved row of rocks piles leading up to a boulder. The piles were all almost completely buried.

Here is a view of near the top of the hill, looking northwest. The site is down to the left among the boulders:
This was the first pile I saw, it is facing to the left in the picture:
Here is the view outward from behing the pile:
There was another large rectangular pile or two next to this one and some low piles leading across the hill up to one boulder. I am not sure what was there under the dead leaves and I am sorry there is not much to see in the photo:
Here is that first boulder:
Slightly lower on the hill was another collection of rock piles, which I realized lay in a curve also leading across the hill to a different boulder. Here is the layout, with yellow outlines where the piles are:
Here is the boulder they seem to lead towards (to the right in the above picture):
Here are some closeups of not much:
Just not much of a pile to look at. But the site overall has distinct characteristics: the medium sized piles, the use of smaller cobbles, the construction directly on the ground, the dramatic western view from a hilltop, the interesting layout and relationship with cracked boulders. We do not have rock piles or sites like this in my closer-to-home territory, further east.

Across the hill there were a few other things to see. Yet another split boulder we have already looked at:Here the view is more towards the southwest, over the water. A hint of a path comes up from below, passing to the right of the boulder.

Fred Meli's new blog

A new blog Stone Ceremonial Landscapes. It begins with posts about Nipsachuck. I added a permanent link, to the right.

Still Hill Farm

My good friend and band mate Todd has a wood working shop on his family’s former property, a farm on Still Hill Road in Bethlehem, CT. A while back, he showed me an incredible collection of stone points of all sorts – quartz and various flints – even a large flint ceremonial spear point of great beauty.
Recently, I had to recreate the bead on some cover boards for a little room in my house, and unable to find the exact plane for this, Todd let me use a variety of his tools to fake the bead – and beat the boards up to make them look two or three hundred years old.
I was there on two different days, the first day immediately struck by the old and twisted apple trees just a little south east of the shop, at the edge of some wetlands. Just yesterday, I stopped up to finish the last two boards and took a little walk with him.

I had my "back up camera," the one that fell out of my pocket in Rhode Island one time and hasn’t been the same since - and it was bright and sunny besides, so these pictures aren’t the best and don’t really show well the feel of the place.

And I didn’t take a photo of the first stone I noticed, right by his driveway: it was a turtle head sort of stone with a depression on top of it, with three big rough chunks of white quartz in it. The bank where I expected a zigzag row of stones might be there, under leaves and debris from the trees (I spotted a couple), leading to a large tree where another row leads toward the wetland.

The thing about some of the rows is that they seem to be a series of carefully placed circles of stones –and abounding in quartz (and quartzite) and all sorts of other garnet studded stones, others I can’t identify but of striking beauty.

I've seen small circles incorporated into some rows here and there, but this place has at least that one row that looks like a long carefully constructed "series of figure eights lying on their sides," if you get what I mean...

There's some obvious "dumped" stone piles, but there are large remnants of what certainly looks to me to be the Native made rows and circles that defined that ancient Cultural Landscape.

There are numerous circles of stones inside the swamp, zigzag rows of stones ( that's a poor photo of one zigzag on the left) and linear rows making borders, and even a lone single large testudinate stone out in a field that I guessed pointed toward the four directions – standing at the north point, I asked Todd if he ever stood at that spot and looked up at the Big Dipper – and of course he said that was the exact spot to see it circle around during the night (in the middle of a field on top of a hill, so it is no surprise).

I’ll go back again, some over cast day like Norman suggests, and try to capture the spot if I can, posting these pictures for now…

Hey - don't forget NEARA next weeked

I'll be there Saturday.

If I can get my site reporting out of the way, then maybe I can concentrate on blogging the meeting.

Some nice scenes at Rocky Pond

The last post (I promise) about Rock Pond [mentioned here]. I have many nice pictures and can't leave the subject without at least showing some of them:
Some sort of alignment:
Structures all over the place, sometimes subtle:Sometimes dramatic.

Here is a generic picture:
And my favorite:Up close:
It was at this place where I was convinced there were older broken down rock piles underfoot. Lots of damaged and mostly vanished structure. I felt this must be a place that had been used for ceremony over a long period of time. What a neat place!

And did I show these panoramas?The first picture at the top is a detail from the right-hand side of that boulder.

PHEW! Now I can get on to blogging Berlin, Littleton, Westford.

Split-wedged rocks from Rocky Pond - Boylston, MA

A few nice examples of split-wedged rocks. It seemed that the place (outlined here) was full of split-wedged rocks. I have already mentioned a couple of these but it is fun seeing the examples together.This next one was quite something, split along a quartz vein, this was northeast of the pond:
Here is the view back towards Rocky Pond.
Note the large boulder to the far left. Evidently this flat split-wedged rock came off of the large boulder originally.

Here is one more, shaped like a manitou stone:
And a view down into the split:
As I mentioned, split-wedged rocks were numerous to the east of Rock Pond; there were numerous small rock piles and split rocks next to rock piles. These seem to be specific to this location east of a lake.