Hunting season(s) for arrowheads

Springtime after they plow the cornfields and after it has rained (preferably about 3 inches, to wash off the surface) is one of the best times to hunt for arrowheads...it is a fresh start to the year. Later in the summer you are not supposed to walk on the crops. So you wait for the fall and have another look when the harvest is done. That is not a new surface and usually there is enough debris left in the field that fall is not a great time to hunt arrowheads. Still later after the winter snow has fallen and melted, there is a brief pre-spring hunting season which can be one of the best times because the fields are maximally washed down and visibility can be very good. When the snow is on the ground or the harvest stops you from looking, then is a good time to look for rock piles. But at the start of the year, just now when the first plowing is done before crops begin to show, is the best time. So I am going out looking more than usual and I think Chris P is also spending extra time now, at this particular time of year. So that is why this blog is spending more time on the subject of arrowheads. I hope, regular (and doubtless a bit repetitive) blogging about rock piles will resume shortly.

Hand Rock - Middleborough, MA

"a rock on a high hill a little to the eastward of the old stone fishing weir, where there is the print of a person's hand in said rock". [Massachusetts Historical Collections Vol. 3d 1810]

"Lenik himself suggests that "the handprint is that of a shaman who has marked the area as a sacred site. The boulder, standing alone on the hilltop, may have been seen as a source of spiritual power. The carving of the handprint may have been a shaman's attempt to derive power from the site."
Hand Rock: http://nemasket.blogspot.com/2009/05/hand-rock.html

Adding an edit, linking to a previous post because Chris Pittman said:
How this place looks today: http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2010/07/indian-hill-middleboro-ma.html

Field find

I went out after work today to search for ancent stone tools. I went to a favorite spot where I have had luck lately, hoping that the heavy rains this week might have exposed something new. I searched for more than an hour, I found a quartz artifact that is perhaps a scraper or knife or a "preform" that was never chipped into a finished point, I'm not sure. Most of the flaking is on this side, the other side is mostly flat.

That is an average find for me, I was pleased. Better than nothing, certainly. I got in my car and drove to another place where I have had luck before hoping to see some fresh erosion, new gullies or washouts, but the vegetation has become so dense there, I saw very quickly that there was no hope of finding anything there today. So out of desparation as the sun began to get low in the sky I drove to a farm field that I drive by often. The landowner told a friend of mine that many years ago, local kids used to go there to pick up artifacts. After I first heard this I spent a lot of time there on a few occasions and I did find some chips and flakes but no tools, I wondered if maybe the kids from decades past might have picked the place clean, or perhaps there was not much there to begin with- it's not a very obvious place to live, in a low place, and rather far from water, there are many other places nearby that I might think would be more suitable. Anyway I thought it would not hurt to take a walk there if even just for the exercise. I found something I did not expect to see. I saw it from several feet away and at first did not believe my eyes.

This is a broken Stark point, perhaps 6,000-8,000 years old. It is made of a dark felsite that has patinated over the millenia to a light gray color. It is well made, the blade edges are still sharp, the edges of the stem have been ground. This shape is very typical for Stark, if it was whole it would have been the best thing I have ever found. I am not complaining about the damage, I am still thrilled with it, a very exciting find. It was broken recently by farming machinery. Maybe some day I will find the other piece- certainly I will be looking.

A small site next to a bit of water - Holden, MA

Behind the Rod and Gun club, some piled rocks next to a tiny pond. To the right in this picture. Seen from the other side of the water
A few surrounding structures included a rock on rock:and a little line of stones:Perhaps something snake like.

Rock Piles, Archaeology and Vandalism

By Imogen Reed:

Rock piles are an important part of the New England landscape. As readers will know, they are also a semi-hidden part of it too. Rock piles come in many shapes and sizes and while their functions cannot be proven (is a rock circle a ship barrow like in Uppsala or the demarcations for a hearth?), but all of them are features of the landscape. They can be seen as simple markers and as fragments of the past.

Some people might wonder, why bother trying to preserve a small archaeological thing that is hidden except to those who know what they are looking for. Rock piles are archaeological truffles, that’s true, but landscapes across the world are full of similar things and destroying them removes character, history and the past from the landscape. What is the landscapes if not a collection, an accumulation of pasts stacked one atop the other?

For example, even people not versed in landscape archeology or any kind for that matter in Britain knows about Stonehenge. How many people know that there are dozens and dozens of stone circles dotted around the country? There is one surrounding and intersecting the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, one in the village of Ford in Gloucestershire. Many more have probably been lost.

The same goes for burial mounds known as barrows. The most famous ones being West Kennet near Avebury and Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. Many have names and many more are listed on maps as tumuli. Most have been found atop hills, but an archaeological survey of any parish or area will find that most burial mounds were erected closer to the river.

This is where the importance of understanding vandalism on the landscape comes in. Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said “what is essential is invisible to the eye” and this counts for the landscape to. If we take the visible, a barrow on a hill, you would assume all burials were made on hills so people could oversee the landscape in death. If most were buried by the river, this is therefore not the case and a wrong assumption has been made. Vandalism has changed people’s opinions on how the past landscape was used.

What type of vandalism? Well, in the case of barrows it was agriculture and landscape gardening. In fairness, it was mostly agriculture. There is only so much land and millennia after a death the importance of that burial lessens, even in Christian churchyards people are now buried atop forgotten burials. Farming with the plough and later with machine-driven ploughs has churned the soil and flattened many burial mounds in Europe.

Has the same happened with rock piles in New England? Almost certainly. It probably happened during the pioneer era when settlers cleared lands, chopped down forests and prepared the soil for ploughing. It makes you wonder how many rock piles have been lost forever? How much of the archaeological picture has been disrupted?

Modern vandalism is altogether different. Some rock piles might be developed later on, but most of the ones that people know about and protect, are in areas that are not going to be developed. The ethics of developing on archaeological site can take up whole books, so let’s look at actual human vandalism on a minor scale. Rock piles are smaller and amongst the most fragile of sites. We cannot know if the present arrangement of rocks represents how they were used or intended, but if someone moves the rocks to disrupt what has been left, they have destroyed a piece of archaeology that cannot be recovered.

The moral question is, should archaeological sites be preserved? Should a ruined fort or castle be left as if (in situ) or restored to its previous glory? Should we mourn the loss of a small rock pile? Yes, we should. The landscape is constantly evolving and this raises questions about whether we should preserve all archaeological landscapes, but rock piles are one that can easily be preserved.

In trying to do this, rock pile lovers are going to run into a catch-22 situation. This is a situation historical and archaeological sites the world over are trying to deal with. For example, the pyramids at Giza, a super version of burial piles and barrows, are visited by millions of tourists. They now have to limit how many people visit in order to stop pollution, wear and tear, footsteps and so on just eroding the sites.

Rock piles will have the same problem. Knowledge and money is often needed to protect something, but raising those things invites more people to check them out. The more people who take an interest in rock piles, the more likely they are to be disturbed or vandalized. Rock piles need to be recorded, photographed and mapped, so if any are lost, it is possible to restore them for future generations. Recording finds from rock piles to stone tools is the archaeologists way of insuring scrap to make sure its value is kept.

Pinks in Holden

Saw more flowers than new rock piles last weekend. I kept seeing pink. Like our local orchid:An azalea:
A maple seed:Part of the newly formed leaf of a hickory:Are those "spathes"?

The least of artifacts, the humblest of points

I spent an hour in a favorite field and thought this was a flake when I picked it up. If you look closely, this view shows some flaking of the bottom edge and some serration of the top edge:
The back reveals almost nothing, just that this is a simple retouched flake. It is made of argillite.
A slight stem on the right and a slight staining from top to bottom help show how this might have been hafted. The serrated edge is still sharp. As it goes, I picked this up a few feet from where I found another very simple stemmed point.

Finds today

Got out in the blazing sun for a few hours this morning. I got a sunburn but found some things that made it worth it. Here's a stemmed quartz arrowhead.

I also found this.

I cleaned them up when I got home. Some people will use water and a brush to remove any trace of dirt, I just rinse the pieces off and wipe off whatever dirt will come off with my finger when they are wet. I don't want to disturb the suface patina, in fact I try not to handle them too much.

My favorite reference for finding out more about the things I have found is "A New England Typology of Native American Projectile Points" by Jeff Boudreau. The quartz arrowhead is a type that this reference identifies as "Wading River." These may be impossible to date when found in disturbed contexts, Boudreau indicates that this point type may not have been a cultural manifestation but rather "a technological manifestation that transcended cultural boundaries."

The other artifact I found today is kind of a mystery object. I'm not sure if this is felsite or flint. From one side it looks like an asymmetrial Levanna point with a missing tip.

From the other side it looks like a Brewerton Eared Triangle with a broken "ear" and a chipped tip.

If it is a Brewerton it would have a very crude beveled base that appears to retain part of the cortex or "rind" of the stone from which it is chipped, this would be atypical and not something I have seen before.

Perhaps this is an unfinished point, maybe something that failed during manufacture. Or it might be more extensively damaged than it appears to be, a fragment of something. In any event it is definitely worked as a tool, not just a chip or flake. Any ideas on this thing?

Indian Mound found in Cumberland RI

Reader j ryan writes:
[I] stumbled on what I am pretty sure is an Indian mound....it was pretty impressive. Perhaps 8-10 feet tall, easily 20-25 feet long, apparently all carefully placed stone. I didn't dig, but pulled up one rock on the top and it appeared to be nothing but stone down 3 feet or more.Also, here's a link to where the site is...roughly!

http://g.co/maps/pf6at

More Elmore G Raymond Memorial Park, Pelham NH

I followed the path to the left, west, and up the southern edge of a brook. Saw what I thought was a nice mound, at the end of an alluvial shoulder, overlooking the brook:
A panorama looking uphill to the south at it:But as I mentioned in the video, this "mound" turned out to be the end of a ramp that came up from the other side. Here we are looking down the ramp, with the natural land to the left and a drop-off to the brook on the right.Viewed back uphill from the other direction:After trying to make sense of this feature, I followed it upstream to where it joined more conventional walls. Then I followed those walls uphill, trying to stay adjacent to the brook, as I continued uphill and upstream - to the left on the map above, following the red dots. There were a few rock piles along the way. This one seemed to coincide with some interesting features in the wall behind:The wall behind:There were scattered piles up in that direction, pretty far gone but also always adjacent to a wall.
I got somewhat turned around exploring the rest of the conservation land and saw little else there.

Wave?

Photo credits: (A. Alexandria 2012 http://www.ancientpathsofshastina.com/)

Two Tsektsel/Prayer Seats (and other possiblities) a mile apart, same sort of "cobbles across a boulder top" thing going on -

What's the Rock Piles consensus? This is a "wave?"

Similar to this:

Or this:

Not the best examples, I know - that's the trouble with having six hundred and fifty thousand photos or more to sift thru to find what you want.
Larry has some excellent examples, I think...

Its a berm! It's a mound! It's super-old!

First of a couple posts about Elmer G Raymond Memorial Park in Pelham NH. Found this up the brook that runs below the parking lot and goes upstream west of the playing fields. At the time I thought it was a well placed mound but it turned out to be a berm of cobbles running up the side of the ridge like a ramp, ending at the lookout over the brook. The beginnings of this berm were up the valley, where it merged with more conventional stone walls.

A few moments later:

Losing one for the Gipper

Went out to explore near Parker Hill Fitchburg, including taking pictures of some mounds I found before when I did not have a camera [see here]. Here is the scene I described then:
It looked as I remembered - those gray spots on the hill below the power lines. But for some reason, having a camera got me to look more carefully and I cannot convince myself that these are ceremonial rock piles. Closer:
There was a nearby field and there were larger rocks strewn around. So I'll subtract this site from the maps. (The lowest left blue outline here).

Stone wall and juniper bushes under the power lines

This is more what it used to look like around here, forty years ago.

White Trillium - Raymond Mem. Park Pelham NH

Hey Tim! I found one.

Grey Feather Gallery

Image from: http://www.ancientpathsofshastina.com/gallery/gray-feather/14522684

Raise your hand if you said "Prayer Seat" when you saw this image. Take a look at the rest of the photos at Alyssa Alexandria's website ~ http://www.ancientpathsofshastina.com/gallery/gray-feather/

"When the novice had recovered she was taken into the high mountains in the summertime by her mentor and her male relatives (as many as ten of them). They went to a prayer seat, cekce>l, a semicircular enclosure of rock – sometimes river rock brought from below ... . ... the novice and her teacher swept the seat carefully [http://texts.00.gs/Standing_Ground,_5.htm]." ~ Thomas Buckley : Standing Ground : Yurok Indian Spirituality. U of CA Pr, Berkeley, 2002.

Insider information: the photos in the gallery were taken in response to questions from Norman Muller, who one commented that "The Yurok Indians weren't the only tribe in the West to construct prayer seats, so the question is, among which tribe in the West did they originate? Plus, they weren't always oriented toward a celestial feature, as many here in the Northeast believe. A sacred mountain or simply a spectacular vista, one that would lead to a successful vision quest, was sufficient." (See: http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2008/09/yurok-karok-and-rocks.html)
There are more images of other tsektsel in the other galleries. Alyssa writes, "All are connected; woven into a single network by Andesite rock walls. Elders have called these walls "Spirit Paths." 

Image from: http://www.ancientpathsofshastina.com/

 And you may note the "Links to Friends of APOS" on the side bar; it mentions "A great blog on RockPiles: http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2012/01/photos-to-compare.html

The Face Rock

Interesting pictures at "Secret Landscapes" (make sure to scroll down).

Roadside Attraction, Hollis NH

Rocky Pond Brook - Hollis NH

The red dot is about where the short wall and boulder were (see here). At about the location of the red "?" there were rock piles, well holes, what looked like foundation holes, and some mounds. Not sure what to make of such a site.

At first, you are looking down along the brook, with scattered rock piles:Some badly damaged piles, and then a well opening:
Some kind of foundation hole:And what is this little ring of stones?
Later I saw other such rings and a more standard 18th century [???] foundation hole. So I don't know what to make of the place. There were some distinctly mound-like structures:And some inexplicable shaped clusters of rock:If you look closely, there is some real shape here:But it is not part of a pattern I know, so let's chalk it up to unexplained colonial usages. But this sure doesn't look practical: