Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
(African) mysterious stone circles
“Metals, Magic and Muti” – Anthropologist suggests shallow surface mining as the reason behind thousands of mysterious stone circles...Upon closer examination, rocks in the area have been found to carry traces of ground ochre and oil, traditionally used by sangomas to coat their hair and bodies. Further, many of the stones in the area have been worn down, perhaps used to grind herbs for muti (traditional medicine). Professor Thornton suggests that the stone circles may also have been used by sangomas as sacred and protected workshops for their rituals, which may explain why they have been left largely undisturbed to this day.
Big Canoe Again
Another image and the statement "Don Wells (president of Mountain Stewards)... was able to determine that the cairns on the ridge actually form a snake pattern.
He used a compass to measure the angle that is formed from the last cairn to the first. This angle is approximately 137 degrees. If you follow the line of the angle it points directly at the island in the middle of Lake Petit. A Native American Cherokee told Wells the island was the probable location of the small Indian village that existed in Big Canoe hundreds of years ago. According to Wells, villages such as this often had a high place of special honor where a sacred fire would burn."
He used a compass to measure the angle that is formed from the last cairn to the first. This angle is approximately 137 degrees. If you follow the line of the angle it points directly at the island in the middle of Lake Petit. A Native American Cherokee told Wells the island was the probable location of the small Indian village that existed in Big Canoe hundreds of years ago. According to Wells, villages such as this often had a high place of special honor where a sacred fire would burn."
Above from: http://www.mountainvistarentals.com/indianrockspark.htm
Sunday, January 15, 2012
More about small mounds around large ones
From Norman Muller:
Your comment on your blog about smaller stone mounds often suggesting larger stone mounds nearby is also commented on in an article by Jeffries and Fish in the attached:
http://shapiro.anthro.uga.edu/Archaeology/images/PDFs/uga_lab_series_17.pdf
(See page 34 ff. See also page 54, bottom, about the grid-like arrangement of the smaller stone mounds below the larger one.)
Your comment on your blog about smaller stone mounds often suggesting larger stone mounds nearby is also commented on in an article by Jeffries and Fish in the attached:
http://shapiro.anthro.uga.edu/Archaeology/images/PDFs/uga_lab_series_17.pdf
(See page 34 ff. See also page 54, bottom, about the grid-like arrangement of the smaller stone mounds below the larger one.)
Indian Mountain Complex - Tennessee
Has this been mentioned before? [Click here]
For example, in light of my recent "Advice"
"...Garrow and Chase (1988) suggest that the actual burials are restricted to larger stone mounds, while small stacks and piles at the site served another unspecified, albeit commemorative purpose...."
For example, in light of my recent "Advice"
"...Garrow and Chase (1988) suggest that the actual burials are restricted to larger stone mounds, while small stacks and piles at the site served another unspecified, albeit commemorative purpose...."
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Great rocking stone video - republishing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9l0ov6RleI
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpTi10GsLeQ
I cannot find the one I made at Saddle Hill in Hopkinton. Ah, here it is:
http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2007/10/rocking-stone-hopkinton-ma.html
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpTi10GsLeQ
I cannot find the one I made at Saddle Hill in Hopkinton. Ah, here it is:
http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2007/10/rocking-stone-hopkinton-ma.html
Friday, January 13, 2012
Porthole Pile - Flagg Hill, Stow MA
I think I was with Dan Boudillion when I first saw this a few years ago.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
End Stone by Spring and Serpentine
Looking North West above at another large end stone, encircled below on a 1934 aerial, enhanced to show endstones and stone rows at a place called the "Wigwams." Native People lived here from first contact in 1659 and into the first decade of the 1700's. The stone rows on the right point toward two possibly 350 year old oaks at another junction of three stone rows. One of those rows leads south to another endstone above the uppermost waterfall in the dark grove of hemlocks in the lower right hand corner.
The Junction of three stone rows at left center is pictured below, looking South East, along the backbone of another stone row, the hemlocks on the same first terrace above the flood plain in the distance.
Rock-on-rock leading down a hillside - Westford/Tyngsborough line
I was exploring and found 2 sites off the end of "Paddock" road, a side branch of Tenney Rd/Westford Rd. See the two small outlines at the top of the map here. Walked it and wanted to climb that small unnamed hill. Saw a rock-on-rock near the summit:
When I walked over to this, I saw another rock-on-rock downhill.
When I walked down to this, I saw another rock-on-rock downhill.
Another view of this interesting shaped rock:
And so it continued down the hillside. Here is a view back up the sequence:
I do not think these rock-on-rock structures are marking a trail, although it is tempting. When I got near the foot of the hill, I saw three or four more structures, layed out in horizontal direction.
How about this nice one:
If these structure define a trail, it is not designed for efficiency to get you from A to B.
When I walked over to this, I saw another rock-on-rock downhill.
When I walked down to this, I saw another rock-on-rock downhill.
Another view of this interesting shaped rock:
And so it continued down the hillside. Here is a view back up the sequence:
I do not think these rock-on-rock structures are marking a trail, although it is tempting. When I got near the foot of the hill, I saw three or four more structures, layed out in horizontal direction.
How about this nice one:
If these structure define a trail, it is not designed for efficiency to get you from A to B.
Roadside Attractions - Tenney Rd Westford
You can tell you are in a good area when you can spot 'em from the car:
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Another small site off Tenney Rd, Westford, MA
Visible to the side of the blue trail, was an invitation to follow the ridge.
A small circle of rocks, with no evidence of charring on the inner surfaces:
A small pile of broken rock fragments at the high point:
A granite quarry, with lots of unused blocks:
At the end of the ridge, a final rock pile:
A small circle of rocks, with no evidence of charring on the inner surfaces:
A small pile of broken rock fragments at the high point:
A granite quarry, with lots of unused blocks:
At the end of the ridge, a final rock pile:
Advice: Look for the mound if you see the horizon markers
I have been mulling over all the "Wachusett Tradition" sites of the last few months and how, so often when I find a rectangular mound with an inner hollow, the landscape surrounding the mound will have several other smaller piles that include quartz, or are vertical sided, or are "ski-jump" shaped. It seems very much the case that the larger mounds have company and are typically surrounded by these smaller piles. If the larger mounds are for burial then the smaller piles are for some other part of a mortuary ceremony - something that includes the underworld and the astronomy of the sky.
I walked into the woods on a trail starting from Teney Rd in northeastern Westford and was thinking about several different things when I topped a ridge and found some nice rock piles. I had anticipated finding something nice and was thinking: "If I find some rock piles, I should look carefully in the neighborhood for a, perhaps less conspicuous, rectangular mound...". Here is what I saw coming over the ridge:
From another angle:
Following my own advice, I looked around when I got to these piles and spotted something like a house foundation across the road and downhill. Later, I decided this was the mound I was looking for.
So I want to recommend to other people hunting for rock pile sites: If you find some of those vertical sided piles, or piles evenly spaced and in lines, or piles along an outcrop and ridge where they form the horizon for a place slightly downhill; then you should check carefully to see if there is not some larger mound in the vicinity, perhaps slightly downhill. [Of course there are plenty of places without such a mound.]
Still further downhill were a couple of smaller ridge/outcrop bumps that also were good candidates for marking the horizon, as viewed from the "house foundation". One turned out to be an outcrop while the other turned out to be an elongated rock pile (that reminded me of Pratt Hill):
Another view:
These pictures do not show a detail which is that: there is a dip in the middle of the structure, breaking it into two pieces. Fifteen feet uphill and in line with the dip there was a smaller conical pile, Here is the view of that smaller pile, facing back uphill towards the "foundation" and the outcrop beyond that:
Off in another direction, forty yards across the slope and perhaps marking the horizon in that direction, was another outlier:
This one had a little quartz:
Let's take a closer look at the "house foundation".
I see smaller rocks used than I would expect in a house foundation and what is up with that wall dividing the space in half?
Do you see how similar this is to the sites along Falulah Brook in Fitchburg? I wonder if we'll eventually discover this type of site is pretty widespread. I especially offer the advice above with the hope of hearing from you, my colleagues, who are out exploring in other places.
I walked into the woods on a trail starting from Teney Rd in northeastern Westford and was thinking about several different things when I topped a ridge and found some nice rock piles. I had anticipated finding something nice and was thinking: "If I find some rock piles, I should look carefully in the neighborhood for a, perhaps less conspicuous, rectangular mound...". Here is what I saw coming over the ridge:
From another angle:
Following my own advice, I looked around when I got to these piles and spotted something like a house foundation across the road and downhill. Later, I decided this was the mound I was looking for.
So I want to recommend to other people hunting for rock pile sites: If you find some of those vertical sided piles, or piles evenly spaced and in lines, or piles along an outcrop and ridge where they form the horizon for a place slightly downhill; then you should check carefully to see if there is not some larger mound in the vicinity, perhaps slightly downhill. [Of course there are plenty of places without such a mound.] Still further downhill were a couple of smaller ridge/outcrop bumps that also were good candidates for marking the horizon, as viewed from the "house foundation". One turned out to be an outcrop while the other turned out to be an elongated rock pile (that reminded me of Pratt Hill):
Another view:
These pictures do not show a detail which is that: there is a dip in the middle of the structure, breaking it into two pieces. Fifteen feet uphill and in line with the dip there was a smaller conical pile, Here is the view of that smaller pile, facing back uphill towards the "foundation" and the outcrop beyond that:
Off in another direction, forty yards across the slope and perhaps marking the horizon in that direction, was another outlier:
This one had a little quartz:
Let's take a closer look at the "house foundation".
I see smaller rocks used than I would expect in a house foundation and what is up with that wall dividing the space in half? Do you see how similar this is to the sites along Falulah Brook in Fitchburg? I wonder if we'll eventually discover this type of site is pretty widespread. I especially offer the advice above with the hope of hearing from you, my colleagues, who are out exploring in other places.
********************
There is a different story here which I should not forget to tell: the story of confusing a large rectangular "burial" mound for a colonial house foundation.The characteristics of the one are not that far off from the other. The main mound here at Tenney Rd lacked structured walling, included smaller rocks but it was not that different from the poorhouse foundation(s) on Nagog Hill Rd.Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Monday, January 09, 2012
Shrine of the Stone Lions
"As can be seen in the photograph opening this entire blog entry, the stone lions are surrounded by a ring of rocks with one entrance."
Sunday, January 08, 2012
First finds for the year
I spent a few hours out looking for artifacts this afternoon. I had an average day looking in a place where I found some decent points last year. I found a few broken projectile point fragments and one rough little dart point or knife, nothing really good, but I am thrilled with any find. I'm going to post pictures of everything I brought home today, just to show the types of artifacts one might encounter spending hours staring at the ground in a likely place- usually I will show only my better finds but thought it might be interesting to illustrate some more typical things. The items at left in this first picture are colonial-era English or Dutch kaolin clay pipe bowl fragments, these pipes have been excavated from Contact period Indian sites in this area but there is no way to date these bowl fragments and they could be from as late as the 1800s. In the center are two quartz projectile point fragments, the upper fragment is probably something worked down from something bigger and then discarded, the piece at bottom is a stem fragment of a "small stemmed" point and it is very finely flaked, it would have been a nice point. The object at right is the only (mostly) intact point I found.
Here is a front and back view of the point or knife. If I came across this in a place that was otherwise void of stone artifacts I might have simply dismissed it as nothing more than a broken rock. The tip and edges seem worn, I imagine from ancient use before this was discarded.
The edges do show the alternating flaking typical of most of the percussion flaked artifacts I find. I believe that this material is a type of rhyolite. Please excuse my dirty fingers, I had been wiping sand off of broken rock fragments for hours.
Here are some other artifacts I brought home, that I usually would not show. I like to try to preserve the entire artifact assemblage when I am surface collecting so I will bring home and bag stuff like this, I have a bag for each site I search. I don't bring home every single flake and chip but try to keep things that are representative examples, or things that may have been used as tools. In the top row are a waste flake of a banded quartz that was valued for making tools, another quartz flake that looks like someone might have worked on one edge, and a broken piece of some kind of unidentified stone, presumably waste from toolmaking. At bottom are a broken worked quartz piece that might have been a crude scraper or knife, a blue argillite flake showing flaking scars on one face, and a rhyolite flake. When I search a place for the first time, I am looking for artifacts like this; if you can spot chipping debris and flakes, you have found a spot worth carefully searching.
Here is the bigger stuff. At left, a big blue argillite chunk, broken, showing some possible flaking along the upper left edge, perhaps it is a broken remnant of an old scraper, or a tool for digging or woodworking, or juast a piece of material that never got around to being made into a point. The object at right is made of a hard fine-grained stone I can't identify, some of the cortex from the cobble is visible at the top and it has been flaked (crudely) bifacially and has an edge all the way around. Similar tools found elswhere are called "cobble choppers" or "proto-handaxes" and are said to be up to one million years old. I might suggest that this much younger tool was perhaps hastily made for some specific purpose and then discarded, it could have been used as an axe, I am just guessing.
A shrine
A friend took me to a nice place in Carlisle MA yesterday to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather we enjoyed here this weekend. There was a lot of stonework in the woods, ranging from typical early American stone walls to more enigmatic features including standing stones and possible effigy forms. I wanted to share these photos of a feature that I thought was interesting, this is built into a stone row that runs along a brook at the bottom of a rocky slope. There is an opening in the row and this feature is adjacent to the opening, facing the water. I believe this little niche and the apertures above it are deliberate features in this structure and I would like to call this a "shrine" although that is admittedly based more on speculation than anything else.
The leaning slab at the end of the row on the left has a familiar shape and I wonder if this stood upright at some time in the past.
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