Fort Devens Stone Wall Map Strikes Again!

I mentioned using the Fort Devens map (see link on the right) as a guide to two things. It shows where there are rocks in the sandy Nashua River valley. It also shows where the stone walls "go crazy" with brief stretches, strange outlines (like triangles and pentagons), walls that hug the edges of the wetlands, and persistent non-compass oriented directions re-appearing across the countryside.

It has been my working hypothesis that where the walls "go crazy" is a good place to look for rock piles. For starters, I could confirm this at a glance: the biggest concentrations of weird walls are around Patch Hill and Liberty Square in Boxborough and in Harvard at the end of Murray Ln. Indeed there are many rock pile sites in these areas with Murray Ln topping the charts.  (The site was found by Bruce McAleer and is reported with his permission). It has the densest concentration of rock piles I have seen anywhere in Middlesex County . So the hypothesis seems a good bet. Looking at the map again, I see several little pockets of weirdness and these are places I know, places with rock piles.

I used the map recently as a guide to where I should go in Shirley, and found rock piles as soon as I stepped into the woods. Last weekend I did the same thing: I noticed the walls are a bit crazy just southwest of Clay Pit Hill in Groton. Groton is a town I avoid - it is almost universally disappointing to explore there. Because of all the sand, and all the stone quarrying, and all the harsh usage. Yet I found a bit of conservation land containing the weird walls shown on the map above, drove there, stepped into the woods, and found rock piles promptly. 

This has gone beyond coincidence, beyond a simple parlor trick. What does it mean? It certainly is a useful way to locate sites but the implication for the stone walls seem a bit more important. We can now say with confidence that Indian stone walls include these properties: short stretches; large numbers of turns; hugging the wetlands; unusual shaped outlines. These "Indian" attributes may be hard to see on the ground but are easier to see from the "global perspective" of an overall map of the stone walls. In the end this tells us that some stone walls really are Indian. It is an independent verification of Mavor and Dix's theories. And it confirms a correlation between weird walls and rock piles. 
We need more of these stone wall maps. The Devens maps is a model for evaluating the quantity of ceremonial structures present. Other towns should map their stone walls! Much of the rest can be derived from that starting point.

So I called this the Duck Pond Ridge site in Groton. The site details are not particularly special. These were piles built on boulders, some with vertical facing, and no sign of larger rectangular mounds with hollows.

 

 

 

One detail was a small outline with a light/quartz rock placed in its center. This was at the southern extremity of the site, just above the housetops.

 

A suggestion is that the outline was used for a ceremony, and the light rock placed inside afterwards. 
It was an almost physical pleasure finding the site by hunting from the Devens map. Although the details may not be important, it is important to know there is a site there and to add a dot to the map. Here is today's version:

Also the relation to walls is important, even though it is hard to see at ground  level.

A lucky week - Part 1

     We've had a lot of heavy rain in recent weeks. There has been a lot of griping about that, but not from me. All these early summer rain storms are keeping me really busy! I've got a lot of pictures to show so please bear with me.
     I like to get out and look for arrowheads on the weekends but the weekend on June 8-9 was packed full of stuff I had to do, I didn't think I would be able to get out at all. I was out of town on Friday night but I knew it was just pouring rain and that the rain would be exposing arrowheads out there somewhere. Sunday I got up really early and had not a lot of time but I had to get out and look. I stopped at a spot where I have had some luck lately, the sun was already blinding even early in the morning and it was getting hot. Bright sun is rough when you are looking for arrowheads, it glares off the bare earth and harsh shadows can interfere with the intent focus that must be maintained when searching. But really the best time to look for arrowheads is simply when you are able to. In this place, I saw a lot of footprints, I know some of those must have been from other people looking for arrowheads, that does not bother me too much as nobody can spot everything and the ground surface is changing all the time. I found some broken fragments and this unfortunately broken large knife or scraper, this would have been really nice if not damaged.

This argillite base sticking out of the sand really got me excited. The part that you can see looks like it could be the base of something really nice. When I pulled it out I was a little disheartened to see that it was really crude, at the edge of what I would even call an arrowhead. I think these crude argillite blades were maybe hastily made for a specific use and then discarded. I find a lot of argillite chipping debris at some sites but few tools, maybe I am not even recognizing the tools as they are so crude that if broken they might be unrecognizable. The second picture shows all my finds from that spot that morning, there's another crude argillite piece, some quartz projectile point tip fragments, a tiny base. Not very much for two or three hours of searching in the sun.

As I searched, an unusual thing started happening. Every time I looked up from the ground, I would spot another person out there doing the same thing I was doing. First it was two people, then three... As the morning wore on there was at one point five other guys out there also looking for arrowheads. That makes me feel self-conscious and uneasy, it was starting to feel like a convention out there. Too much for me, and I was out of time anyway. I was not unhappy with the finds I had made and was ready to call it a day. After all, it wasn't too long ago that if I had found those fragments and pieces over the course of a month or two, I would be elated. I decided to take a different way home (I had driven kind of a long way) so I could drive by another spot where I had found a couple of arrowheads in the past. It's a small area near water, very muddy and wet. It's not a place where I would expect to find a lot of stuff because I am used to finding stuff in well-drained sandy places that would have been well-suited to setting up camps. But as I say it has produced a couple of things for me before, and where there is one there are always more so I figured it would be worth a very quick look. I got out of the car and noticed two things right away. The first was that the rain had unfortunately turned this muddy area into a morass, a quagmire of muck. The second thing, though, was more encouraging: no footprints. The ground surface was fresh, totally new since my last visit. I didn't have a lot of time but I thought maybe I could just take a very short walk along one edge of the mud. I took just a few steps and had been looking for about 20 seconds when I saw this.

That's the base of a Levanna point. Such a shame about the missing tip because this thing was a monster and it is beautifully made. The white stone against the dark mud was shining like a beacon. To find something right away like this I take as a clear sign that I could be on the verge of a very good day. I realized that I was going to have to get in there and search this place. I told myself I would force myself to walk as fast as possible and only pick up obvious stuff, like this Levanna base was. And right away I started finding more artifacts. I saw this sticking out of the mire.

I pulled on it and was disappointed when it came out of the ground with no effort. The flat triangular blade I expected was not there. Broken, I guess. I wiped away the mud and was astounded. Not broken. It's a hafted scraper.

This is an awesome find for me. It's thick and nicely made. I have some crude hafted scrapers made from small broken points at the discard stage that were reworked. But nothing like this. I love it. Another few minutes of walking, and I was spotting large bases of stemmed points just waiting to be picked up. These would have been really big arrowheads.

I thought this little piece of flaked quartz was maybe a piece of a triangular arrowhead. It turned out to be the tip of a decent point. Finally, a whole arrowhead.

Here's another whole one that was easy to spot. I really love this little stemmed point, this is a shape I like to find very much. The broken triangle was found not far away.

Another super obvious arrowhead, unfortunately missing the tip, and a triangle base. I went from being excited to elated, then to a stage where it became so surreal it did not seem like real life.

I have not shown a number of crude broken biface fragments, projectile point tips, and other badly damaged fragments. Here is my total haul for the day. And this after blasting through that productive spot as fast as possible, knowing I was missing stuff. I was back out again last week and weekend and found more artifacts. Later this week I will post my other finds from what turned out to be a really lucky week of searching. This last picture is all my finds for the day. I think I have had days where I have found more intact quality arrowheads but for sheer quantity this was my best day yet.

Foxglove

Wished I had one of these growing in my garden.

When I got home, it turned out I do have a white one.

Preview

CULTURAL LANDSCAPES IN CONFLICT

Photo (Dis)Credit: "My Rock Cairn" by GuthrieColin

http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/p/m/1d6421/

"CULTURAL LANDSCAPES IN CONFLICT: ADDRESSING THE INTERESTS AND LANDSCAPE PERCPETIONS OF NATIVE AMERICANS, THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, AND THE AMERICAN PUBLIC IN NATIONAL PARKS" By Emily Anne Eide

“Field Methods:

    The fieldwork for this project took place over a period of three weeks, July 11 to August 1, 2010, during which eight previously recorded prayer and fasting sites were surveyed and subject to condition assessments…Upon arriving at each site, the record site form of each individual site was compared directly to the current state of the site. When possible, the contexts of the record photos were used to further determine that the correct area for the site had been located. In some cases, it was possible to identify rocks in the record photos that were still present at the site. Once the team was confident that the correct area for the site was found and UTM coordinate information documented, any relevant structures were measured and photographed. When photographing a site, the team attempted to use the same camera placement as used in the record photos as noted earlier. Sketches of the site features and any other associated artifacts or graffiti were also drawn…

   Causes of impact include both human and natural factors ranging from bioturbation to deliberate site destruction. The most common categories of impact to the surveyed sites included natural weathering processes, recent graffiti, and the rearranging of site features into cairns or windbreaks…

   The most common forms of human impact were graffiti, the rearrangement of rock structures, noise pollution, and the placement of summit registers…(pages 30-33)”

http://etd.lib.umt.edu/theses/available/etd-01302012-115613/unrestricted/Eide_Emily_Thesis.pdf

A couple of "Dry" weekends and a small site

Went back to Shirley a couple times and back to Jones Hill north of Blood Hill in Ashby. Almost to no avail - in terms of finding rock pile sites. I was pretty happy to spot an Indigo Bunting. Although I am told painted buntings are rarer, it was only recently I saw a blue one. Can you see it?

The first blooming pink mountain laurel:

A couple of nice features in a stone wall, a few feet apart. Mavor and Dix call these "orthostats":

 

That was Shirley. Then for Jones Hill in Ashby, I recall seeing a few odds and ends on the way up the hill but no significant clusters of rock piles. Starting from Harris Rd, I walked north along the brook till I hit houses. Saw pretty woods:

 

When I got to the top of Jones Hill and headed down the steep southern side, cutting diagonally across the hill, I came across a single stack of rocks next to a spring:

See how this is right next to where water comes out of the ground?
Then a small cluster of piles just below a stone wall:

 

 

I assume there were other sites on that slope that I did not see, since I spotted a couple even though there was heavy undergrowth and I only followed a single diagonal line down a big hillside. Those were the best rock piles I saw in a couple weeks of hunting. But it is OK; another weekend is almost here and I've got my eye on a couple spots in southern Sudbury.

"Cobbles on Boulder" in a Watertown CT Park

and a boulder row too:

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2013/06/veterans-memorial-park.html

Trap Rock (and Rock Piles) Vandalized?

Goofing around on a rainy morning, I came across a story about the U.S. Forest Service "Vandalizing a Native American Town Site," which turned out to be Trap Rock Gap, which turned out to be a condensed version of a September 2012 Examiner story by Richard Thornton. It's old news, but something I thought might be relevant here, in more ways than one.

In part, the story says;

 "In July, a group of hikers in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest were shocked to discover that the USFS had cut down over 100 live trees to block a trail. The trail led to a dormant volcanic vent and large complex of stone ruins in Track Rock Gap, a 1,100 year-old Mayan site in Georgia's mountains. No alternative route was provided." 

The Native Village Story provided the photo above here:

http://www.nativevillage.org/Archives/2012/Sept%202012%20News/US%20Forest%20Service%20Employees%20Vandalize%20Native%20town%20site.htm (and a link to the Examiner Story.)

And this photo above as well, although when I clicked on the photo (thinking, "That's one of Norman's! They should have credited him!"), I was brought back to  http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2010/06/archaeological-and-ethnohistorical.html which I suppose could technically be considered "credit."

 I had just happened on some other photos, also from Rock Piles, supposedly from Georgia and discovered by Carey Waldrip, on a now defunct website, but they turned out to be Peter's photos taken on Rocky Hill in MA!

So really there are a couple stories here: Is this a Ceremonial Site, a Town Site or a Maya Site? Was the Forest Service intent to discourage people from messing around with the stones because of all the publicity? Should everyone but me (since no one ever steals my photos) put a watermark or something on their photos so no one can claim them as "rock solid" proof of (enter your favorite fringe group theory here) as the party responsible for building the construction - especially if the photos are from a thousand miles away from where they claim they were found?

I may be easily confused but now I'm starting to think everything I see on the World Wide Internet might not be true...

Curious rocks from Colorodo

Reader Chris Schram writes:

I ran across your website and decided to show you a few bird and other animals I found.

These were found in Colorado and made of petrified wood.
#5586 is a side body profile of a bison with crystal perfect in middle of body.

A bird:

Isolated "altar"

From northeast of Watatic Pond. An isolated find:

One Rock Pile Mystery Solved

Image lifted from: http://4cornershikesarch.blogspot.com/2011/09/fisher-towers-trail.html

East of Watatic Pond in Ashby

I took a walk last weekend that was deeply satisfying because of the success of my plan and exercise of skills. But it was hot and I exhausted myself.

I was looking over maps Friday afternoon and noticed this place north of Blood Hill. We are up against the border of New Hampshire here, more than 1/2 way to Mt Monadnock, and an hour's drive from home. But the area looks ideal for rock pile hunting: lots of small hills and swamps and an old road going through there (the dashed line above B). I planned to park at A, head in towards the old road, and explore along there. 
When I parked, I stepped into the woods on a hillside, and walked along with feet and muscles complaining. And my feet tried to pull me uphill but my mind told me to stay to the left and head for the wetlands. 
I got off the hill, stepped across a brook at the head of the marsh, and stopped to consider. Which way to the old road? I thought it would be north and to my right. But it was ideal site topography to my left with rocky land coming down to the opening of the marsh. So I changed plans and took no more than a few steps when I saw a big bump of vegetation. Could that be a rock pile? I already said it:

As  I  looked around, I saw there were three others (later I saw one more) around a small vernal pool-now dry and brown,with a layout a bit like this:

The pictures do not show well because of the bright sunlight and because the piles are very thoroughly covered with vegetation. I see this as a sign of greater age than usual.

 

Here is a second one. It is more than 5 feet tall, and maybe 12-15 feet wide. That's a pretty big pile.

A third:

seen from above:

 and a fourth:

This is a familiar shape, a square "U", or perhaps a "crescent". In the picture, the U opens to the right. 
These piles are an intermediate size in the overall spectrum; they are old and, to the extent that structure is visible, it is an early form (the U). A bit like at Brown Hill in style but much bigger. And now we are in the Souhegan watershed. Is it a new style? Not sure. In any case the piles seemed deliberately placed around the wet spot. 
So I took pictures, and continued southwest along the verge of the marsh. I crossed a wall and came to another wet place with other piles, or I should say other wet places and other clusters of piles. Because as I walked along I saw several clusters and lost count. The pictures are not clear enough for distinct memories. 
One place:

 

 Another place:

 

This is a small double chambered mound. I saw another a few hundred yards away further along the verge.

These are small rock piles with tails- again an early form like the U. You almost never find piles of this shape looking any fresher. 
Anyway...continuing:

 

Here is a really simple arrangement:

Two lady-slippers decorate it. Is that a cup holder in the foreground?
Then I crossed another wall, and got to another wet spot and saw another group of rock piles around it. But this time, small piles under the ferns.

 Note the feather:

And here, if you click in, you may be able to see another large, oblong enclosure shaped rock pile:

So yes, the piles do fit into the framework of rock piles with hollows that I have been seeing and which I looking for. It is what I am hoping to see when I go out. Now in the walk, these seem to alternate with small groups of smaller piles around a wet spot:

Then I came up to the back of houses where the mounds looked more recently manipulated, so I turned off to the side, and came up to the old road I was going to look for. Followed it uphill to the west, and then climbed up and over to "C" where I saw that strange structure built into the cliff. 
Looped around and down into another valley, without any more rock piles except one isolated "table" and I started thinking of extracting myself from the woods. By now I was pretty tired. Aching legs had given way to being out of breath and having a tired back. Heading south, I still had to climb the hill I skipped at the beginning. It was a waste of breath. When I got back to my car I was so tired (it was 93 degrees out) it took me most of the drive home and a cold coke to begin to recover.