Small enclosures

These are from Cowassock woods. I believe these to be among the oldest structures we can detect by eye. Thought I would show some examples:

I think these are pretty much the same as what we see at places between Horse Hill and Blood Rd in Groton, at places in Acton off Briar Hill Rd, at Scott Reservoir in Fitchburg. They are always barely above ground, and big enough for one person. Talk about speculation, here comes one: if it is true that these are of a kind with larger and fresher looking "rock piles with hollow" then the trend is from small single person burials to larger single or multi- person burials.

Broken Brewerton

I was really happy to find this yesterday, in a place where I have found several triangular and small-stemmed quartz arrowheads in many hours of looking. This was an unexpected find. It is the unfortunately badly broken base of a Brewerton point, I believe the material is felsite.

The people who made these were different from the people who made the quartz triangles I usually find. Maybe this little place was inhabited by different people at different times, or perhaps it was lost during a hunt? Maybe the people that made the quartz points traded for this or acquired it in some other way? It's a shame this is broken. It was big and narrow, maybe used as a knife, or a drill? I dream of perhaps some day finding a whole one like this. I have very, very few Brewerton points and I think the shape is really attractive. I found some triangular quartz arrowhead fragments on Sunday also, more typical stuff, almost not worth showing.

Showing a student around Cawassock Woods

There is lots of stuff at Cowassock Woods and adjacent Wildcat Hill in Ashland, so I thought it would be a good place to walk around and talk to a student from Bridgewater State doing his senior thesis on rock pile site characteristics and their distributions. 

Walked around for more than an hour and managed to miss the bulk of the sites on the hill. Did see this one nice collapsed structure built into the split of a large boulder. 

Did also see faint terracing around a large collapsed chambered mound 

(note: it and the previous mound in the split boulder both had big "hollows").

The conversation reminded me of some things I feel bad about. I was reminded of my relation to the community of people at large who are interested in Native American ceremonial structures. A community I am not all that close with. And I kept hearing ideas - bad ideas - I sent out into the ether myself 10 years ago. Or ideas from Mavor and Dix. A lot of it sounds wrong to me today. For example "standing stones". Are they really a separate category? Or, for example, is it good to automatically identify piles that have a single larger rock as "turtle piles"? Are the compass directions, as interpreted by today's Indians, as sacrosanct as we think? Are long range inter-site alignments real?

Years ago, when I had only seen a handful of sites, I was full of speculation. But later, after seeing hundreds of sites, many of those speculations seem silly. The whole process of speculating before observing looks worse today than it used to. And here was a student with theories who had never even seen a rock pile. 

This gets to the root of my discomfort about the community of speculators, at large. There is not enough observing going on and in the rush to get towns to accept that these sites are sacred Native American artifacts, we may accept non-science. Or is bad science OK if it protects rock piles? [Sorry to be so inarticulate.]

Appetizer

Tie Creek

Turtle Petroform at Tie Creek

"...You don't have to go to Tie Creek to see petroforms, however. It's the heart of the petroform site but better known to the public is Bannock Point, which is open to tourists. You can see as many or more petroforms at Bannock Point with one difference. The petroforms at Tie Creek have not been disturbed.

If you didn't know the background, it would be easy to have a Stephen Leacock moment at Bannock Point. A story by humourist Leacock might go something like this: Eons ago, some bored aboriginal teenagers spent an afternoon arranging a bunch of rocks into animal shapes as a prank. Serious scholars have been studying the shapes for hidden meanings ever since...Granted, it doesn't take much to make the outline of a turtle or snake out of rocks. But the act was not to create an art form. The concept of "art for its own sake" was alien to early aboriginal peoples, former provincial archaeologist Anthony Buchner wrote in Manitoba Archaeological Journal (Vol. 2, No. 1, 1992)...Turtles, snakes and human effigies are the most common type of petroform. It's a mystery why most other animals aren't represented. There are also geometric petroforms..."

It also says in this article: "One mystery is why there are none east of northwestern Ontario."

Turtle Petroform in Woodbury Ct (East of NW Ontario)

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/fyi/whiteshells-sacred-stones-126445578.html

Dec 8 - Stone pile field trip

Hi rock pile folks,

I wanted to invite anyone from the rock pile gang to partake in this one day symposium I'm putting together in Catskill NY

" Unknown Origins of the Engineered Stone Landscape in the Catskill Area and Beyond"

Saturday December 8th  Site Tour at noon..... http://hopeskillian.blogspot.com/followed by a moderated Round Table  Discussion possibly live on WGXC  7-9 pm that nite at Crossroads Brewery in Athens NY.

If I could ask you to pass this message on to any other  rock hunters  who might be interested,This would be greatly appreciated.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts,

Matt Bua

917 291 7404

More Cowassock Woods

This woods is on a slight slope down to a large rock pile with a hollow in it. A faint terracing of the soil steps downward to the large pile - faintly visible in the video, if you watch it a couple times.

A Make-shift Maya Stelae

"At Lamanai what remains of two 16th century Catholic missions are also nearby. Maya natives rebelled and burned the churches to the ground as part of a regional uprising. A make-shift Maya stelae standing in front of what remains of one church, is widely interpreted as renouncing all allegiance to Christianity."

http://www.nichbelize.org
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Institute-of-Archaeology-NICH-Belize/103208099965

Rock piles in Price Township

Reader Kim also writes:
This third site is on both sides of the road in Price twp. a couple of miles away from the other two sites. If you would like more pictures please let me know. There is a fourth site about a mile away, but we haven’t taken pictures there yet.

Rock piles from Middle Smithfield Township

Reader Kim writes:
These stone piles are in Middle Smithfield twp. a few miles away from the first site [see here].

Cowassock Woods

As the seasons go...

...so go the colors of this blog. It looks like we are getting back to the drab season. 

Rock piles below a waterfall - Amalomink, PA

Reader Kim (via gophile) writes:

...These rock piles are next to a stream at the bottom of a water fall, near Analomink, PA, outside of East Stroudsburg. We took pictures of two other sites a few miles away. Please let me know if you would like photos.

 

 

Some detail shots of one of the piles:

 

More West Ashby Rd

With reference to here where I mentioned stepping into the woods. This time, I headed west to explore one more head water of Falulah Brook. To no general avail; but I did pass a couple minor things on the first little hilltop before the wetland.

 

 

As I crossed a wall, I noticed some jumbled stuff along the far side. I did not pay too much attention since a little field clearing might push rocks up against a wall this way - I guess.

 

Looking back: 

I did go around the top of the wetland and get up the last small hill there but did not see anything definitive - maybe a cluster of rocks that could have been something but not enough to want to photo it.

Interestingly, on the way back from this unsuccessful exploration, the only thing I noticed were another couple of rock piles, built against a wall.

 

Then looking across the wall, it turned out to be the same place as before - but an adjacent wall. There was a substantial wall bulge as well.

 

This clustering of features seems significant, at the top of a low hill as it was, at a Falulah Brook head water. In the end, this serves as the exploration's result.

Alignment of acton grid?

(See original here) This was not reproducible with later surveys, so I do not know what is true. 
Update: Fred writes:
That line is labelled W 36 N on the picture you sent and in my notebook as well, which is a solar-oriented transit direction.  In that direction I get that the major standstill moon rises at about W 40 N on a level horizon, at an angle of 42 degrees, so the moon fits pretty well to a 3 degree horizon at W36 N.  In the other direction the solstice sun rises at about E 32 S as seen from the center of the earth, and E 33 S as seen on a level horizon, so when rising again at 42 degrees the sun fits pretty well to a 3 degree horizon at E 36 S.  (I am reading this off a sketch graph and

recommend sketching it out)

    It makes more sense to me that the viewing point was under the barn being built in 2010, and that there was viewing to the NW of the major moon, the minor moon, and the summer solstice sunset, because that hypothesis fits more of the data;  but the whole problem is still not enough to be convincing. 

West Ashby Rd in Fitchburg

I may have written about this road before. Going south from Ringe Rd, you cross Falulah Brook with stone mounds all around - if you could only see them. But you can't because of the bushes. And then you go up a steep hill after which it levels off. One of my typical explorations starts 1/2 way up the hill, where I step into the woods on foot. But coming back disappointed (or not) I never drove further south on the road. 
It turns out that, just at the crest where the road levels out, there are two or three large mounds on the right on what appears to be private property. Here is a view from the road:

If you head a few hundred yards still further south on West Ashby Rd, this appears on the  right:

This is not a rectangular mound but more of a triangular one. 

 

 

 One corner is extended into a fat tail:

With a nice piece of quartz in the middle:

There was a second structure adjacent to this; more strewn out along the edge of the flat area - in the kind of location one could expect from field clearing.

But I don't think so.

Behind Reubens Hill - a tough stream crossing

Went for a walk that took me up the side of Reubens Hill from the southwest, down along the ridge heading ~east parallel to Rt 62, then back down to the northwest (passing a site I knew but could not locate this time) across to about where it says "Clamshell Pond", then across the pond outlet on a man-made causeway, then over to those little hills to the right of "District Courthouse". I was on the land between two brooks when I tried to exit. You can see a drainage ditch meet the natural brook just above Rt 62 in the middle of the bottom of the map fragment. Not being able to get through there, I circled around thinking I could get to higher ground and out but I was blocked by the drainage ditch. I wasn't going to go all the way back and determined I had to find a way across the little ditch. Except it was 6 feet wide - farther than I can jump. 

There was a place where a piece of log fell across and broke in 2 pieces. So I picked up a suitable staff and tested putting a first foot on the near piece with support from the staff. Well, the staff went in to my wrist, and the log was floating. I managed to test the second piece of log and it too was floating. With around four feet of water underneath, it was not going to do the job. Here's the ditch, the bastard:

I ended up dragging the log you see into position, and taking advantage of some slightly more solid floating debris. Also there was a helpfull thin tree growing by the ditch and I hung on to it, bending it over with my right hand; holding the staff in my left hand. I probed  the far side with the staff; got into position; adjusted my first foot; placed the staff in the middle; and told myself that one smooth step across would do. I committed, it did go smoothly and I fell with relief onto the pine needles on the far side. Being overweight, out of shape, and almost 60 is part of the difficulty level.
Actually I did see one rock pile down in the tongue of land between brook and ditch. I only saw it because I had to reverse direction and it came up under foot. Here it is at the edge of the wetland that was  blocking me:

Also I should mention that the causeway across the southern end of Clamshell Pond is made from rock quarried right there and the span includes a small section of original bedrock with (a) a substantial rock pile built from what look like unused blocks of material; and (b) a small "U" that did not have signs of charring and was made from much smaller rocks.

 

Here you see the "U" in the foreground, the pile with large blocs in the background, and beyond is a wetland at the foot of the hill of the courthouse.