Moundsville Stone Tower

Norman Muller writes:
Attached is an image of the Eastman watercolor, which I copied from the book Seth Eastman: A Portfolio of North American Indians, by Sarah Boehme, Christian Feest and Patricia Johnston (Afton, MN, 1995). The painting in question is illustrated on page 116.

The caption accompanying the painting reads in part: “In addition to seven mounds (‘Celtiberic tumuli,’ as he called them) and traces of ‘circumvallation,’ Schoolcraft located ‘on rising the hills to Parr’s Point … quite entire and undisturbed, the ruins of a tower or look-out, upon a commanding point of ground on the farm of Mr. Micheltree.’ It had been built over an excavation of several feet deep, walled with rough stones, and had supposedly once stood ‘many feet’ high. Similar remains were discovered by Schoolcraft on the other side of the Ohio River (Schoolcraft 1851-1857, 1: 123; see Squier and Davis 1848: 182).

“In Eastman’s view, which faces nearly due south, the conical Grave Creek Mound appears in the distance behind scattered farmhouses and close to a bend in the Ohio River.” The caption is on page 117.

The watercolor drawing measures 4-15/16” x 7-5/8”

Something like this was also mentioned here.

Mobile Phone use may stave off, reverse Alzheimers's

(Not rock pile related, but I couldn't resist) From the AFP:
Write your own caption.

Stone snake - New Salem NY

Polly Midgely (long time NEARA coordinator for NY state) writes:

This stone structure, which resembles a serpent, was found in June on private property in North Salem NY. I first noticed it from below. The serpent was looking out over a swamp from a higher position above me. It looked fierce.

The serpent faces west and runs E-W along a ridge top for 120 feet. It clears the north side of a house by about 12 feet and extends along the upland length of the property from its ravine edge to the town street. This serpent wall does not mark the property line. It is hard to know if this stone wall/ serpent body was shortened by the street but, to me, the tail does not seem finished.

It is located about 1/2 mile south of the Titicus River and runs parallel to it.

Rock pile against the sky - Harvard MA

Simple Rock Pile - Berlin MA

Rock-on-Rock near Harvard U Observatory

Rock Piles at Outlooks

Observations accumulate into patterns and ideas form slowly. I have been reporting examples of "chambered cairns" (see here for an example from Framingham) and two weekends ago, in Berlin, I walked up to a ridge with a fine southeastern view to find a chambered cairn and a site very obviously located in relation to the view outward (see here) . Thinking back to some of the other recent "chambered cairns", some were at nice outlooks and some were not. At the same time, some of these "cairns" are rectangular, others were elongated ovals. So these are not simple monolithic ideas; rather I am seeing some hints of commonality, some hints of themes that I hope will become more real and more valid over time. I previously only posted a video of the Framingham "chambered cairn" example. Here are a couple of other pictures of it. This is an isolated rock pile on a small piece of the Sudbury Valley Trustees land on Doeskin Hill. Note the view to the south:and the note the hollow in the center of the structure (from one side):(and from in 'front'):

* * *

But I don't actually want to write about chambered cairns so much as about large rectangular piles that top a ridge and look outward. (It is just that a lot of examples of such seem to be chambered.) The nice weather after Christmas gave me a chance to do some exploring. What with the find in Berlin, and the Framingham example (also an outlook), my interest was drawn back to Oak Hill [Oak Hill is the long ridge following the western edge of the valley of Beaver Brook (north to the Nashua) and Elizabeth Brook (south to the Assabet), a valley followed by Rt 495 as it loops around the northwestern edge of the Boston area. This is the area associated to the Boxborough Esker, as written about in Manitou. The geology of Oak Hill is layers of schist, standing on edge. This makes for steep ups and downs. With the easy commute via waterways and with its steep slopes ideal for watching the sky or a distant horizon, it is no wonder that this ridge contains the highest density of rock pile sites around here. It is the main reason I can go out weekend after weekend and continue to find new sites. ] Oak Hill is one long outlook - a ridge with excellent views to the east, running for miles through Littleton, Boxborough, Harvard, Bolton, and Berlin. As I looked over the topo maps I figured it might be worth exploring more directly around the Harvard University Observatory on Oak Hill. I found several small sites over the course of a couple of walks there. On one walk I started near "A", found a rock pile (shown under new snow a few posts previously), then continued into the woods, skirting the edges of an orchard (indicated by green dots on the map). There are lots of big sites in this area, so I was skirting the fringes looking for other smaller sites and I came to a small site at "B". This site consists of a long broken down rock pile on top of a low ridge, looking eastward a short distance to three separate rock-on-rocks. First I noticed the rock-on-rocks, then the smeared out remnants of a larger pile at the top of the small ridge there:

Here is a view uphill:And a view downhill:[A nice snow started falling and I was relieved to be on foot]

The size of the component rocks in this smeared-out pile are significant. They match the sizes used in the Framingham examples, and the Berlin examples. This same rock sizes appear in one of two examples from a subsequent walk. The main significance is how different it is from another pile discussed below.

Last weekend I managed to get FFC out of Carlisle for a short walk downhill from the Harvard U. Observatory. He knows people everywere and we ended up parking at the house of a friend-of-friend on Cleeves Hill Rd, and accessing the woods directly behind the house. Almost immediately we got up to the top of the ridge, and almost immediately located a large broken down rock pile (at "C") that was definately at an overlook, definately made from similar sized component rocks. To me, this feels a lot like these chambered cairns discussed earlier.
Note the view eastward:
Note the size of the component rocks - overall largish. So the attributes worth noting are:

• good view eastward
• rectangular and large ~25' sides
• large component rocks but not too large to carry
  

Another smaller pile was just over the curve of land 20 yards to the side:

Contrast that with what else we found up there on Oak Hill. At "D" we came across something that was quite different and just enough like field clearning to make me unsure. This was a big 20 yards long berm at the crest of a ridge made mostly of smaller component rocks.
Actually the pile was hooked around like a "J" with the long berm as the main stem of that letter.

At one end of the berm was loose dumped rocks, suggesting a practical agrarian reason for this pile. At the other end of the pile, a single white rock, suggesting a ceremonial reason for this pile. Note that the component rocks are small and that this is quite a different beast from the outlook piles shown earlier. Sometime contrast with some "other" helps clarify differences between types of rock piles. This large hooked berm is unlike the rest, but at the same time similar to other berms I have seen: some in Lexington and Waltham [reminds me a little of Whipple Hill], some in Littleton [reminds me of John Hanson Mitchell's "Serpent Mound" at Sarah Doublet] and one in Princeton overlooking Watchusett Reservoir. [Sorry there are no better pictures.] As we returned from that high point, there were several other beaten down structures made from similar small component rocks. Seems to me that the rock harvesting mechanism is a significant classifyer of a type of rock pile. Since these component rocks seem to have come from a similar mechanism, located near to it, it makes sense to group these with the large berm. Here was another berm-like structure forming the edge of the ridge.And here was a small rectangular pavement of cobbles in a bit of a hollow along the wall. So, some rather diverse structures up near "D" which cannot be completely disassociated from practical agrarian purposes, even though the large hooked berm is quite interesting and comparable to berms in other places. The sites at "B" and "C" may be candidates for a new site classification involving ridge crests and outlooks.


After that nice day, the weather got colder, I got in one more walk, then it started snowing again, which it is doing now.

Silver lining behind the "Oxford Mound"

Norman Muller writes:

I just heard from Harry Holstein, who was interviewed several times in the Anniston Star newspaper concerning the Oxford, AL, stone mound. He says the mound itself was all but destroyed, but most of the earthen hill it sat on survives. Trees that were growing out of the stone mound were toppled, and they pushed the stones in the mound apart and some fell down the hill. The area is now fenced off and no one can get to the top of the hill.

But some good came from all of this. The city of Anniston called Holstein to have him survey an Indian mound near their airport, and apparently a bill will be introduced to the Montgomery (AL) State Legislature to protect prehistoric sites by State law.

Starting to snow

A scene near Oak Hill Rd in Harvard, MA:

2009 Retrospective

2009 Retrospective

An Outlook in Berlin MA (2)

(I meant "southeast")

An outlook in Berlin MA

Went out hunting rock piles on December 27th, 2009.
I climbed a hill, back of the road, and came to a spot with what would have been a magnificent view to the southeast. Climbing the last few steps up to the top I was thinking: this has got to be a site, whether or not there are rock piles up here, just look how the rocks are scattered around - they must mean something. But there were rock piles. As I approached a boulder near the top, I could see some scattered rocks to its side:Then cresting the rise, a couple of larger rock piles through the ground fog:A closeup:Increasingly, I am noticing when a large rock pile like this also has some kind of hollow at the center. Increasingly, I believe this is an architectural feature of certain piles. Possibly it is what remains of an inner chamber. Other people have said they think hollows were built into the surface of a pile as a place to sit. Whatever the explanation, it is clearly a feature worth noticing. I am starting to get a sense of the distribution of this particular "chambered" feature - it is western Middlesex county and over west of the Nashua River at least into Leominster and Westminster. I think these large "chambered cairns" represent at least one distinct culture. Some of these mounds [eg examples in northern Harvard] are elongated ovals, about 5 feet high. Others, like these from Berlin, are more rectangular and not so tall. So it could be a couple of different cultures.

A closeup of a smaller pile:
[That big pile in the background is a pile of dirt tossed up by a bulldozer. They are that close to destroying this place.]

This gives a good sense of the layout of the piles and boulder along the edge of the outlook:
In this picture we are looking south, back towards the way I came up the hill, with the boulder at the far rear of the picture. The outlook is to the left. To the right are the standalone piles. Behind them is a flat area, pretty much torn to shreds by bulldozers. But there was one smaller pile still there in the flat area, built on a split rock:From there back to the ridge and view west:
In the background, the boulder is to the right.

Taking one last look at the view,I proceeded north along the edge. There was another tumbled structure:and I came to a short berm blocking the highest part of the gully:The road was built over it, so this might have been simply part of road building. But it also fits into a pattern of large rock piles.
The component cobbles are of like size between this pile and the ones earlier on the ridge.

Oxford Stone Mound "makes it to the big time"

This is the first time I remember seeing an official publication like Archeology Magazine noting a rock pile related story. The following is from their end-of-year list of most most endangered archaeological sites [click here for the complete list] (Recall also that the Indians in Alabama used the USET resolution as part of the basis for their argument to protect the mound.)

Signal Hill Mound
During construction of a Sam's Club Walmart megastore in Oxford, Alabama, contractors stripped earth from a nearby hill, destroying a stone mound that was built in the Late Woodland Period, around A.D. 1000. Archaeologists have only recently begun to realize the significance of stone-mound networks in the eastern United States so few have protected status. After public outcry over the site's destruction, Walmart halted the project.

Merry Christmas

Moneyhole Mountain - Fahnenstock NY

Robert Buchanan writes in:

A couple of weeks ago I was back in the Moneyhole Mountain area of Fahnestock.

There's an interesting mound/cairn that I had been to a few times in the summer but revisiting it in the winter I can guess why it is situated where it is.With the leaves down one gets a spectacular view westward to the mountains on the other side of the Hudson River.

There is a nearby cairn cluster site that also sits by a high point with a wide western view.

In another interesting twist of history, this mound was used as a control site for the first major international orienteering event (World Cup, May 1986) to be held in the US. A permanent sign which is visible in the summer pictures shows it was used as a control site.

So along with the ancients, the site was visited by the world's elite orienteers back in the last century.

Mosier Mounds - Oregon

[Here is something interesting] I read about his at Science Frontiers Online [click here] a website always worth exploring.

Fooling Around with Turtles

I might have used a photo of yours at:

Fooling Around with Turtles

Last pile of the season - Doeskin Hill Framingham, MA

Supposed to snow this afternoon, probably enough to keep me inside past New Year's.

Found this today on a hill in Framingham.

Two Stones

The Stone Turtle in front of the
Cherokee County Historical Museum, Inc. in Murphy, Cherokee County
A large soapstone turtle (approx. 3' x 5' x 8') welcomes you to The Cherokee County Historical Museum in North Carolina (http://www.cherokeeoflawrencecountytn.org/JubileeStone.pdf).

The Oneida Stone and Things Worth Knowing About Oneida County
November 29, 2009 by Mrs. Mecomber
http://newyorktraveler.net/the-oneida-stone-and-things-worth-knowing-about-oneida-county/

Sitting Bull

Norman Muller writes:

The link below may interest many of you.

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2009/sitting-bull/