Sorry for no new posts

I have some good stuff from the weekend but have not been able to find time to get it posted. Sorry for the delay.

Smallpox burials - Harvard, MA

Not far from Poorhouse Rd in Harvard, is a solitary gravemarker. Nearby in the woods there are a number of small ground piles with white rocks - adding to the general suspicion that this is how Indians were buried (at least sometimes).The gravestone reads:
"Here lies the body of Capt. Benjamin Stewart of Boston, who died of the smallpox June 16th 1775, in ye 45th year of his age".

For a long time FFC has speculated that the smallpox patients were moved out to the fringes (which would be true of Harvard, MA in 1775). In this case, possibly the poorhouse was involved with smallpox victims. Anyway, here is a gentleman from Boston buried in Harvard with suspected Indian graves all around. You sense a story. The rock piles are pretty easy to miss:Yet one sees a piece of white rock, not quartz but feldspar this time - aptly called the "poor man's quartz".


With small rock-on-rock structures at the periphery of the area:Also some slightly larger piles off in one direction:Here is one pile that caught my eye:This reminds me of some similar structure I saw in Falmouth [click here and scroll down].

I think FFC has made a good guess. It seems reasonable that a smallpox victim would be moved out to the poorhouse in Harvard, and then buried with the other poor who, at the time, happened to be Indians. Why Indians? Well who buries anyone under a rock pile with a white rock? I suppose this is circular reasoning.

Two Turtle Poem

The Two Turtles Again

Ruminations from the Distant Hills

A blog post comment led me back to this blog. It is impressive in its love of the woods. That being a topic area I have been thinking is a broader category into which this "Rock Piles" blog fits. If you have not visited their recently, it is worth another visit.

Effigy with a quartz head - Boxborough, MA

At the Beaver Brook Conservation land, right next to a trail, I saw this rock pile. I have seen it in the past but here are some fresh pictures.There is not much doubt in my mind that this is deliberate construction with the quartz placed as it is (lowest in picture). Also it really looks symmetric and like a head although [I know] it is subjective - Here is a side view:What do you think? Tim, it is not a turtle and it is not a mammoth. On the other side of the pile from the quartz there was a bit of a flat plate. Could this be a bird? or a beaver?

Update: Maybe this is the same Unktena "horned monster" myth that I wrote about here. I did not mention that this pile, here, is one of two; the second having quartz in the middle. That matches the previous rock pile pair reasonably closely. Theseventhgeneration's 2nd comment, for some reason, caused me to speculate that the flat plate behind the quartz might be like the 'horns". I know it does not fit exactly. Here is the 2nd pile. I did not show it earlier because it was so covered with plants:And a "detail" of its piece of quartz:

Waldseemuller Map at the Library of Congress

Thanks to Terry Devaux on the NEARA message board for this:


http://www.loc. gov/rr/geogmap/ waldexh.html

The following message comes from John W. Hessler ...

If you were not one of the nearly 400 people who could attend last month's Waldseemuller Symposium at the Library of Congress or if you did and just wanted to watch it all again it is now available as a web/podcast on the Library of Congress' website.

All four sessions of 'Exploring Waldseemuller' s World' are there for free download and viewing.

Session 1: Scholars and Scientists
Session 2: Exploring the Known and the Unknown
Session 3: Sources and Texts
Session 4: Changes and Revolutions

http://www.loc. gov/today/ cyberlc/results. php?cat=1

Hope you enjoy it...it is over ten hours long!!!!

John W. Hessler
Senior Cartographic Librarian
Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society

Cairn at Child's Park in Dingman's Ferry, PA. from Norman Muller

From Norman Muller:

Before a small group of us drove and hiked to the wall complex (click here) , we visited Child's Park in Dingman's Ferry, PA, a beautiful area with spectacular waterfalls and surrounding pine woods. To reach the waterfall, we walked down some steps to the pool in front of the waterfall, and from there we followed a trail downstream for a couple of hundred yards where we came upon two large cairns, one of which was still in relatively good condition with a small terraced wall surrounding it. We didn't know quite what to make of this construction, but we later decided that the terrace wall was of recent viintage to help protect the cairn, which we concluded was ancient. Stone lined pathways weaved in and out of the cairns, and it is possible they date to a period when the cairns were a destination for visitors. The other cairn is within twenty feet of the other and has partially collapsed, but it is still impressive.

I am attaching four photos of this area: one of the waterfall, and several of the cairns.

Stone Wall Complex - Milford, PA. From Norman Muller

Norman writes:
I was shown a most impressive wall site in Milford, PA, just over the border from NJ. It is probably the most mind boggling wall complex I have ever seen, not only for its size, but for the intricacy of the stonework, which is just amazing. The complex is in very rocky, and occasionally swampy terrain, with walls curving every which way, as you can see in image 385. In one section of the wall (image 384), extremely small stones were used in the construction. The walls in some cases are at least six feet high or more (images 369 and 370), and mostly 2.5 to 3 feet wide (image 380). Imagine the work that went into this, since each stone represents a separate action on the part of the builder. Colonial? I seriously doubt it, given its location, curving walls, complexity, and the sheer manpower and time involved.

Boxborough Hilltop Rock Pile Site

Took a walk with my wife and re-visited an old friend - a site on top of a hill in Boxborough MA. One of the more interesting features, is the pile visible on the left to the rear above.
Pretty clearly a deliberate gap.

One special thing about this hilltop is the scattering of large boulders.

Hog Swamp outcrop

Driving south on Rt 495 in Bolton/Berlin MA, there is a cut through the bedrock on the right a short ways (perhaps 1/2 mile) before you get to the Rt 62 exit. I have been trying to figure out how to get to this outcrop from the land side, but it appeared to be surrounded by the swamp there, called "Hog Swamp". I realized, though, that I could go to end of Quaker Lane and sneak through backyards. I actually knocked on a door for permission but, getting no answer, I snuck around without it. The area I got to was not as isolated as I had hoped, as there was an old stone causeway in one place leading over to the higher ground from Quaker Lane. I figure the Quakers had used this ground systematically. Nevertheless, possibly because of Indians coming back afterwards, there were a couple of little signs of ceremony on the southeastern side of the rise of land cut by the highway - a couple of rock piles a few yards from the highway.Seems like there is always a little something, if you look for it.Just for my own recollections: there was a brown creeper (a small bird) that wouldn't leave me alone when I got to the highpoint. It is fun being superstitious and I imagined it was telling me to look closer - which I did until I found the couple of rock piles.

Still Thinking about Mastadons

If the oldest Paleo Indian sites in CT do go back 20,000 years and Mastadons romped around at the same time, well don't you think just maybe: Could it be a Mastadon?

Irises at Beaver Brook Meadow - Boxborough, MA

Hilltop Orchard - Northborough, MA

Across the street to the south of Cadwell Mem. Forest in Northborough, there was what looked like an attractive hill - based on the topo map. On the ground it turned out to be an old orchard, with apple trees mixed in with the maples and oaks etc. At the top was a nicely built cairn that was seemed to be part of the stone wall up there and not ceremonial. It was well built:The western side of the hill was steep and I did see a low stone row that I think probably was a ceremonial structure:
Mt. Wachusett lies roughly in that direction.

Small site, Cadwell Memorial Forest - Northborough, MA

There seemed to be a practice in there of building rock piles in single long lines as if precursors to a a stone wall that never got built. I'll skip those photos. But I did stumble on one small site where the piles were clustered at the edge of an outcrop looking southwest over a wetland.

Small treasures from northern Estabrook Woods - Concord, MA

There is more to explore up in that woods, so I did a loop at the northern end and saw a couple of nice ceremonial structures. It is interesting that the Indian "hand of man" still sits pretty heavily on the northern end of the Estabrook woods, almost as conspicuously as the Anglo "hand of man". The Indians must have lived up here and I continue to speculate about Kibbe (or is it Kibby?).

Somewhere not far from Middlesex School is this lovely split wedged rock:I looked for steel drill holes but did not see them. Still the regularly spaced indentations along the upper edge suggest that some kind of harder tool was used to at least get the split started.What would the Gage's say about that?

Then I walked northeast along some kind of northeastern fork in the dirt road (called Estabrook Rd) and passed a remnant of a rock pile:I was surprised at how much "new" unexplored territory there was along there. Deeper in and downhill there was a breakout zone with a single large rock marking the start of the water, with a pile on the rock:And there was a little knoll down in there with a wall crossing it. At the high point was a break in the wall and someone had borrowed some rocks from the wall to make this small structure:
I think I now recognize this. It is a small prayer seat enclosure, that has been stoppered with a single round stone in the middle. One speculates that closing the "U" was done after the seat was used. The flat plat, on the right in the photo above, is also a common feature. There is good evidence of "U" shaped prayer seats, some with very high enclosing walls (especially ones we see from out west (like this) and there must have been a reason for such high barriers around the supposed seated person (see also comment here from the Wolbach Farm in Sudbury). Here in Estabrook woods, it is a humbler affair. The view outward would have been through the gap in the wall.By the way, the gap in the wall seems unlikely to have been to accommodate vehicles, since it leads directly down into the swamp and there was no trail through the gap.

Nice new material being posted at Stone Ruins, Cellar Walls

See link to the right, or go directly: Stone Ruins, Cellar Walls

That Turtle on the Mound Again

Testudinate is what I titled that post with the apology for the blurry photo.
And I must confess that I can't remember exactly where it was - as well as whether it actually was on a mound and not in a stone row.
But this morning I went through some folders to look for what I saw before and after, to jog my memory, and found a better photo of the mound/stone/rock pile/heap or whatever the Native American name was in the Quirpi dialect and put together this post: That Turtle on the Mound Again...

Rhyolite - the gold of stone age world

(Not rock pile related)
I was just reading an article about Stonehenge [Click here] and they were mentioning that the blue stones had been transported 225 KM from their source in the Preseli mountains and no one knows why, since there were other materials available much closer to the Stonehenge site. Then the article mentions that the blue stones are of rhyolite. Is that correct? In Concord MA where there is no good arrowhead making material, rhyolite is the commonest imported or "exotic" material. Around here anyway, rhyolite was precious. They had to be transporting hunks of it around and trading it etc.This leads to an idle speculation: the use of blue stones at Stonehenge would have represented a huge symbol of wealth - like building doors of gold or walls of bronze. Prehistoric conspicuous consumption. But that is probably wrong, they had metal by then didn't they?

More Wood Piles in Rockbridge CT

More Wood Piles in Rockbridge CT

Middle Woodland Blade of Quartz - Woodbridge CT

My father dug this up while transplanting a dogwood tree on Rock Hill Rd, Woodbridge CT. It remains the best thing in my collection. I believe it is about 1K years old because the shape matches things called "Middle Woodland" in the literature and online.
My dad always thought it was ceremonial because it was too brittle to use, but I think it could also have been a knife.