Clear Water

...almost makes me wish I was a crayfish.

Appetizer

New England Antiquities Research Association - Spring Meeting

See here.

Henry Smith Site (Montana)

"Hi-Line Fires Reveal Hundreds of Cultural and Historical Artifacts"

                    By Brett French french@billingsgazette.com  Apr 7, 2016

    “By reviewing the photographs and other images 2,400 points of data were marked across the 300 acres — roughly a site every 3 feet. Before homesteading on the surrounding lands altered the landscape, Chase estimated similar sites could have stretched across the landscape…”
         “When you look out across this (landscape) it tells a story of people in North America throughout time,” Chase said. “So we drove by a homestead on the way here, that’s one part of the Hi-Line’s history. We’re now into this part of the site which is one part of the Hi-Line’s prehistory..."

  Re-loading the page seemed to work to get rid of the questionnaire thing, so you can get to the full story here: http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/hi-line-fires-reveal-hundreds-of-cultural-and-historical-artifacts/article_dadf4763-f0f1-5e5e-b49f-cb59bdc985c1.html

Wondering About Wondering Beside Willard Brook (ME)

Photos and some text from a blog post by Leigh MacMillen Hayes, taken from here:: http://wondermyway.com/2016/04/03/wondering-beside-willard-brook/, where Leigh writes: "Part of my quest was to take a look at stone placement and think about it not as Colonial only, but also as Pre-colonial or Native American..."
And my speculations and photo overlay illustrations here:
 http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2016/04/wondering-beside-willard-brook.html

Prayers in Stone Talk at Croton Point NY

Near Whitemore Hill, New Ipswich NH

(And Recent Viking News)

Above: the PWAX photo that got me going (it's raining here), virtually ending up here: 

Maybe I should have entitled the post: "If I had a Million Dollars."

Stone Hatchet - an old find from Concord

About 2 inches long (quite small)

3 Roadside Rhomboids - CT

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2016/04/roadside-rhomboid.html

Gates Lane - Stow

The land development threat in Stow, at Gates Lane (see here also),  is continuing - in "fits and starts". If you live in Stow, or know someone, please get involved by going to a Hist Comm, Planning Comm, or Conservation Comm meeting and finding out as much as possible about what is going on. Also contact this blog if needed.

Snake Effigy (Fences, Fishing and Chemical Warfare Agents at the former Fort McClellan in Alabama)

   I came across this below a while back, passed it on to a person or two, including PWAX who suggested I post it up here. It took a little while for me to investigate further into the source of the text, but it didn’t take that long to find that it was a stenographer’s version of Harry Holstein’s presentation at a January 2007 meeting of the Restoration Advisory Board (RAB) that allocated Department of Defense Funds for Investigating a Snake Effigy as well as the cleanup of some Chemical Warfare Agents and two guys at the meeting talking about fishing.

Please note: The Court Reporter and Commissioner for Alabama at Large, who transcribed this was apparently someone unfamiliar with some of Harry’s words, including the term fish weirs, as illustrated here as HH explains that Native American stone building technology in the area goes back a long time: “One of the things we see here in Calhoun County a lot are called fish queers, fish traps. They're very efficient. Instead of hunting elephants, now they're fishing. And the way these things worked, they piled rocks up one bank, rocks off another bank, they leave a little opening, this V, and they anchored a basket facing upstream, and the fish swim along the rocks right into the basket, Captain D's. They got themselves a fish dinner, very efficient. This is on Terrapin Creek, by the way, just a little bit north of here in Calhoun County.”

Intro ~ CURTIS FRANKLIN: “All right. The program tonight is on the Snake Effigy from Monty Clendenin and Dr. Harry Holstein, and so I'll turn the program over to them…”

DR. HARRY HOLSTEIN: “Hello everybody. It's nice to be here tonight. I've never been to the RAB meeting before, but the topic that I'm about to present, I think, is something that will spark your interest in one degree or another. I've been at JSU as an archeologist for 25 years now. One of the things that I've discovered in those 25 years is northeast Alabama has an incredible heritage, prehistoric heritage and historic heritage and as far as archaeological resources are concerned, and I've had an opportunity to investigate a lot of cool sites, interesting sites that range from Hernando de Soto to Davey Crockett to prehistoric Indians that lived 8,000 years ago.

      And one of those things I'm fortunate enough to be (see? have seen?) here in northeast Alabama is a phenomenon that archeologists have contended with from the Appalachian Mountains all the way from Alabama up to New England, which I'll show you in a couple of minutes. The Midwest has to deal with this resource. It's kind of a mystery. A lot of archeology is a mystery. We don't know it all. We just know bits and pieces of it. The ability to study sites like the one we're going to be talking about, the Snake Effigy. We'll have a better understanding of what it's all about, and what it's all about, basically are rock piles, piles of rocks laid across the landscape.

And the controversy comes into, very simply, a lot of people pile up rocks. I bet everybody in this room has piled up rocks out in your yard or piled up rocks in your neighbor's yard at one time or another. Like everyday rock piles, Indian rock piles, the Snake Effigy, is a good example to how this is to be done…”

    You can dive into and try to translate the rest here: http://www.mcclellan.army.mil/Documents/Restoration%20Advisory%20Board%20Transcripts/2007/January%202007.pdf?articlesPage=3

Some more bits and pieces, links to this and that, including mention that the U.S. Army recognizes USET:

http://www.mcclellan.army.mil/Documents/Miscellaneous/Unanticipated_Site_Discovery_Plan_MtLongleaf/USET_Resolution_2007-037.pdf?RelDoc=%2FDocuments%2FMiscellaneous%2FUnanticipated_Site_Discovery_Plan_MtLongleaf%2F&file_url=%2FDocuments%2FMiscellaneous%2FUnanticipated_Site_Discovery_Plan_MtLongleaf%2FUSET_Resolution_2007-037%2Epdf

“The Department of Defense (DoD) has made a strong commitment to keeping citizens informed and giving communities a voice in environmental cleanup decisions. In meeting this commitment, DoD makes information available on environmental restoration activities, provides opportunities for comment, and seeks public participation on Restoration Advisory Boards (RABs).”

Fort McClellan established the Restoration Advisory Board (RAB) to enable affected communities and representatives of Government agencies to meet and exchange information about Fort McClellan's environmental cleanup program.

http://www.mcclellan.army.mil/RAB.asp?article_id=2

http://www.mcclellan.army.mil/Documents/FinalFortMcClellanCRP2014SEPT.pdf

Mountain Longleaf National Wildlife Refuge, Calhoun County, Alabama Unanticipated Site Discovery Plan (Archaeological and Historic Sites) October 2013 Archaeological and historic investigations at Mountain Longleaf National Wildlife Refuge were performed by the Department of Defense (DOD) prior to the Refuge’s establishment in 2003. DOD’s investigations focused on the mid-19th – 20th century Fort McClellan and other types of historic properties present on the military reservation, such as precolumbian artifact scatters, quarry sites, historic period house and industrial sites, historic period cemeteries, and stone wall and mound complexes. Stone wall and mound complexes are considered to be part of a tribal ceremonial or sacred landscape (see USET Resolution No. 2007: 037).

http://www.mcclellan.army.mil/Documents/Miscellaneous/Unanticipated_Site_Discovery_Plan_MtLongleaf/Unanticipated_Site_Discovery_Plan_MtLongleaf.pdf?RelDoc=%2FDocuments%2FMiscellaneous%2FUnanticipated_Site_Discovery_Plan_MtLongleaf%2F&file_url=%2FDocuments%2FMiscellaneous%2FUnanticipated_Site_Discovery_Plan_MtLongleaf%2FUnanticipated_Site_Discovery_Plan_MtLongleaf%2Epdf

And of course, the link to the report:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264308123_Preliminary_Investigations_At_The_Skeleton_Mountain_Snake_Effigy_Site_1CA157_Calhoun_County_Alabama

More by Harry: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264309293_A_Preliminary_Archaeological_Investigation_of_the_Morton_Hill_Stone_Structure_Complex_1CA671_Calhoun_County_Alabama

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2015/09/prayer-seats-mounds-walls-and-snake.html

Quartz from a wall

This looks somewhat deliberate. Can't decide if it fell off or was intended to be this way.

If you imagine all those rocks going back on the wall, there is not much room.

Western Parker Hill, Fitchburg

With apologies, it was raining and I am not sure where I was. The lower outline is one cluster of 3 or 4 larger run-down mounds. The new mounds and piles I found were somewhere in that upper outline, but not sure where. 

This (believe it of not) is a rectangular stone mound, with a hollow on the right. It faces north and west out over the Whitman River (start of the Nashua). With slightly more surrounding context:

Also from in there, closer to the wetland up on the hill (still in that upper outline), an old double-chambered thing:

Way up in there, near the highest point of water, there was what looked like an only mill: piles next to the water, and a causeway/dam.

Nolumbeka Project Schedules

A blog from southern NH, with rock piles

http://myredschoolhouse.blogspot.com/

Comments are requested.

So if they are nomadic, the rocks wouldn't have been cleared for farming?

From Reader Russell M.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3509611/Raute-people-survive-eating-monkey-meat-speak-language-never-written-down.html   Look for the picture of the kids on the rock. 

From Lexington/Arlington - more Whipple Hill

Reader Steve G. writes:

The balance rock in on Mt Gilboa in Arlington Hights. The 2 rock piles are in the Whipple Hill conservation area in Lexington /Winchester. South of Locke pond. I saw other piles there. These were the best 2. I would park at Wright Locke Farm and walk in from there. 

 

A good "spot" - roadside attraction in Acton

On my way to park off Briar Hill Rd at the edge of the Nashoba Conservation Land in Acton, I was on Davis Rd and spotted something in the woods to the west of the road:

Got out to take a look and - sho 'nuff: a rectangular mound:

There is a hollow:

This is about where the cross hair is on each of these map fragments:

This is a significant find. The third such mound in this part of the Nashoba Brook Valley. Others are on Strawberry Hill and across the brook, south of the extension of Strawberry Hill Rd. You can see from the topo map that this location is at a high point of water, above the brook.
More specifically, there is another larger site in there:

At Nashoba

 

This is NOT a ceremonial rock pile

Note the:

• Separation of rock sizes
• Piles with one size component built over ones with other sized components
• Dirt mixed in and extensive (new) tree growth. 
• I suspect the signs of a bulldozer are clear enough but I don't know what to look for.

Some kind of site preparation.