Pocumtuck Homelands Festival

From the Nolembeka Project.

Speaking of Walls and Rock Piles...

(and "Serpent Stacking")

{Referring to the post: http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2011/12/speaking-of-walls-and-rock-piles.html}

      I’ve been looking at this PWAX photo above for 5 and a half years now.

     Not all the time for 5 and a half years of course, but every once in a while. The image comes up on my screen saver, but I also open the photo up every now and then, just to view it as a large image. I was just looking at it again:
  http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2016/07/speaking-of-walls-and-rock-piles.html

"Oldest Stone Tools" found at Gault site in Texas

http://westerndigs.org/16000-year-old-tools-discovered-in-texas-among-the-oldest-yet-found-in-the-west/

Michigan's Mystery Monuments - The use of a landscape geography technique in the study of stone cultural features:

A U of NH study, via Norman Muller:
https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/2016/07/michigans-mystery-monuments

Natural-Cultural Landscape Presentation by Nolumbeka Project Vice-President this week-end

From the Nolumbeka Project: 

Natural-Cultural Landscape ltural Landscape of the Connecticut River Valley
Saturday, July 23rd at 10:00am-Greenfield Savings Bank
282 Avenue A, Turners Falls, Ma 01376

Please come and join Nolumbeka Project vice-president Lisa McLoughlin as she explores the relationship between Nature and Culture over time right in our back yard, the Connecticut River Valley. Lisa’s power point presentation highlights the relationship between people and the environment with an emphasis on how we ALL can treat and preserve our wonderful river valley. Folks have lived and thrived here for hundreds of years, and, with a kind heart to ourselves and Mother Earth, we can all prosper and grow for hundreds more! Light refreshments provided in comfortable air-conditioning! No reservations required. Invite a friend or neighbor!

Also, with the August 6 Pocumtuck Homelands Festival  just over two weeks away we still are looking for volunteers. The volunteer check list is attached. We anticipate a wonderful event with many familiar friends and new presenters as well. Hope you can be with us!

Another Old Newspaper Article

 There were no photos accompanying this NY Time article, so I just had to illustrate it myself (although you could use many a photo from this blog to do the same). There are some overlays etc. on this one from 1991 that I never saw before, so I'll just link you up to:

Scholar Looks at Quaint Stone Walls And Sees Pioneers' Garbage Heaps

Mulberry Mounds (Dacula, Ga) - 2013

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2016/07/mulberry-mounds-dacula-ga-2013.html

Latest update on Hopping Brook desecration

Turns out we may be looking at permitting irregularities.

• There was a EPS/NEPA permitt needed for "storm water removal"
• Native tribes were not informed.

This means the historical aspect of the permitting was improper at the Federal level. Let's hope this is enough to get some delays operating. Check out the red outlines below (which are approximate), and check out the wetland crossings. [Thanks to Matt Howes for getting this information.]

Some of these maps include stone walls but they leave out all the mounds and smaller rock piles.

Why get caught un-prepared?

It is striking that the threat to the Holliston site has been known for more than 10 years: to Holliston Historical Society, and to NEARA members. I know of no effort (other than Bruce McAleer's attempts to contact the developer, long ago) to scope out and prevent the damage that is happening. You could see it coming, as I mentioned the orange flags in May. Why are we always caught "off guard" when development actually begins?

Shouldn't NEARA have a registry of threatened sites, and a plan? Well someone should and it takes money. If there are any rich people reading this, think what an endowment might do to help protect sites before the damage starts.

Native American mounds a casualty of Hopping Brook expansion (Holliston MA)

By Bill Shaner

Daily News staff

   "HOLLISTON – Along the edge of woods that crews have recently cut to expand the Hopping Brook Business Park sat a pile of stones unlike the uprooted boulders and tree trunks in which it surrounded.

   The stones were laid in an oval-shaped mound. The mound had rounded edges that wrapped around a depression in the center. Overgrown and worn, with faded moss on the granite rocks, the mound had clearly been there for years. Some would argue it's been there for centuries.

   A small but resolute group of archaeologists, historians and activists believe the mound is one of thousands of similar artifacts, sometimes called rock piles, that predate white settlers. Left by native people, experts believe they were created for spiritual purposes, perhaps for burial or other ceremonies.

    And soon, that one particular mound in Holliston will be gone.

 The mound on Tuesday afternoon resembled an island, surrounded by hundreds of acres of deforested land. Crews had already removed a mound next to it, said Joanne Hulbert, town historian.

“That's pretty much the sad tale of it,” said Hulbert. “Bulldoze it over, the march of progress, and a little vestige of Native American evidence goes away once more.”

When the 200-acre development, essentially a delayed second leg of the Hopping Brook Business Park, is complete, the mound will make way for a road or a parking lot, foundation for an office space or a warehouse. Construction started about a month ago.

Standing by the mound, Matthew Howes, a Holliston man who's helped archaeologists discover and register native landmarks in the area, lamented the fact it would disappear.

“People need to kind of wake up and realize that native people were here for thousands of years … and their remains are everywhere,” he said.

There are hundreds of similar mounds in the area, and those who are passionate about native histories want to see more thought given to their preservation.

Curtiss Hoffman, a Bridgewater State University professor, has inventoried about 5,100 similar mounds all along the Eastern Seaboard, from Georgia to Nova Scotia. The mounds, he said, often sit in clusters – 50 or so built very close to one another. It's something he feels isn't an accident.

The only way to truly save the mounds is to have state preservation offices acknowledge them as historic, and include them in state registries. Until then, he said, local ordinances and land acquisitions to preserve the mounds are the most effective method.

But before that happens, there needs to be consensus in the archaeological community. Some feel the mounds are the product of colonial farmers removing rocks from farmland. Hoffman feels the mounds are too deliberate, too ornate in their arrangement, for that to be legitimate." 

Bill Shaner can be reached at 508-626-3957 or at wshaner@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @bill_shaner.

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/20160712/holliston-native-american-mounds-casualty-of-hopping-brook-expansion/?Start=1

Bulldozing the temple

Here stands an ancient relic, a monument to the dead. One of many. Undisturbed for hundreds of years, now the bulldozers are driving up. 

[In more detail: this is a small flat-topped pyramid with a crater in one side. It is about 8 feet above ground level and shaped like other American burial mounds - but considerably smaller, in a traditional New England style. This style is common in the Charles and Merrimack River watersheds. If you click in to magnify, you'll see a hint of a platform or "terrace" - which is not so common]

This development at the Hopping Brook Industrial Park in Holliston, MA needs to be publicized. Is there anything you could do? How about calling a friend or someone you know from Holliston, and giving them a nudge? How about writing a letter to a newspaper, like the "Holliston Reporter"? 

Hopping Brook - development starts at a massive Indian Burial Ground

Just thought you should know. I heard from Mathew Howes that they are bulldozing around and over the mounds at Hopping Brook. Now these are burial mounds and this should be a serious NAGPRA violation.
Anyone living there who can become active in fighting this development, should contact Joanne Hulbert of the Holliston Historical Society.

On Vacation

Summer schedule: light to no blogging.

A small arrangement of stones - SW Rocky Hill Groton/Ayer

Came upon a boulder with a rock pile on top.

Looked around a bit and the boulder seemed part of a line of boulders:

A bit like a gunsight. There was another boulder with a rock splinter on top:

I do not think this was in line with the others but to the side.

Sometimes rock piles are not ceremonial

Came across this one by itself.

 For some reason I cleaned off the leaves, which usually don't do.

 What's that in the middle?

The iron spike suggests to me this was a surveyors fixed point, so this pile might mark a corner or some other aspect of a land survey. Any other theories?

Short stretch of wall Sudbury State Forest

From the same location as my previous post. This seemed to be a short stretch of wall going downhill to end in a boulder but actually the wall continues after a break (behind us). Still this is of interest:

Look at the black and white rocks right at the very beginning:

Sudbury State Forest - Deerfoot Park

I went back to the place I posted about here in 2012 (there is a map) which is a place with rock piles built into the outcrops. I saw them again with slightly sharper eyes and still did not manage to take any good pictures. 
There are rock piles visible from Concord Rd but you have to get out of the car and go look at the outcrops. As I wrote before, most of the outcrops have added rocks piled on top of them, with more or less structure. They seem quite old. And the site is extremely similar to parts of Noon Hill. Let me point out three things I noticed: a rectangular pile right "below" an outcrop, a nice place to be between two fine old things, an arrangement of stone wall that was broken like a dashed line.

Here, note the smaller rectangular pile in the foreground.

 

Although there are lots of things on the outcrop behind, this pile is isolated. I was excited to see it and it reminded me of something at Noon Hill - where there are also piles built on outcrops.

A few minutes into my walk, I stepped uphill between two adjacent ridges of rock and saw this one on one side:

And this on the other:

Not the best pictures, here is a better a picture of the first - which is the largest and least disintegrated of the whole place:

The third thing I wanted to note was the "broken-dash" wall, that was near this pile and led towards a larger boulder.

Now there is too much light for good photos! Anyway, I noticed a flat faced satellite pile near this wall and those outcrops with mounds. I realized later that its flat face, was aligned in the same way as the wall:

Here we are looking towards the wall at this pile's flat face. You can make out the wall in the background:

I nice place. Only a few steps from the road, this site is very accessible.

Shaped Rock from Northboro

Reader Christian C. writes:

I have been following your Blog for quite some time and find the subject very interesting. I live in Northboro Ma in quite a old home that is estimated from the 1800s, right next door is a original brick one room school house and my house is right at the bottom of a hill with a stream across the street. 

There are quite a few interesting rocks on my property as well as some unique features, stone ring, large circular pit, as well as some mounding shapes. The pictures I sent is of one particular rock that has a split in it, and what looks to me like could be a "face" and behind the rock is a long mound and the rock i attached pictures of looks to me as if it could be the visible "head" of this long buldge/mound. Past this rock there is another large rock almost acting as a gate, with then a third large rock about 10 feet past this. The rock with the face also has some white quartz on top and the sunset in almost a perfect alignment with the rocks/mound. 

The stones you see on top of the mound behind the split rock, I had put there since the area almost acts as a natural divider between the lawn area and the woods. Anyways I hope you find some of this interesting and if you find any interest in these and would like to see them in person I would be more than willing to have you come by. Thanks and appreciate the work you do with the blog, very interesting stuff. Thanks!

Arrowhead finds - June

     It hasn't rained much, but I have had some luck and am happy to have some photos to share.

     Here are a couple of broken finds from two different sites earlier this month. It's a shame about that pink rhyolite stemmed point, it is well made, an interesting material, and it would have been really nice. The quartz Squibnocket Triangle is decent but unfortunately also damaged.

     One day after work, I stopped to get something to drink on the ride home. I got back in the car and it occurred to me that there was a place where there might be something to find, that might not be too far away from where I was. I plugged the address into my GPS and saw that the spot was less than 45 minutes away. It was warm, sunny, and dry, but I thought it might be worth at least driving by. So, off I went. I parked the car and walked over to the area I had considered searching. Bone dry, dusty... Not very promising. I took 10 steps. I saw a gleam of quartz, picked it up. It was a perfect arrowhead with a needle sharp tip. I had been looking for 10 seconds. What a thrill! I considered getting back in the car and leaving. I usually search this place for about 2 hours for every stone tool I find, and the conditions were not good. Well, I am glad I stayed! Here is what I came home with, after 2 hours of searching.

     The items on the bottom row are crude or broken things that show obvious flaking, I do not think they are just flakes. The other items are projectile points or fragments of tools. These very small arrowheads are both whole, or nearly whole. Miniature versions of the most common shapes I encounter, in southeastern New England. Both are quartz; the Squibnocket Triangle on the right is nicely flaked.

     These were my nicest finds. The one on the left is what I picked up just seconds into my search. The one on the right is nice and big. It really got my heart beating, when I spotted it in the dust.

     In addition to the usual quartz tools and fragments, I found some more interesting materials. The stemmed point on the left, missing its tip, is from a white material that I believe is chert. This tool was so heavily resharpened that the blade is narrower than the base. I believe that these people were really thrifty when it came to fine materials like this, and this tool was worked down so much, I imagine this was the discard stage. The midsection on the right is made of flint and shows pressure flaking on one edge. A rare material, around here.

     Here are the best of the finds, cleaned up.

The Ograbme that Grabbed Me

I was looking at this wall this morning:

"Since I have had more than one snapping turtle give me this exact sort of look, I am reasonably sure that this is a Stone Snapping Turtle:"

More:

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2016/06/second-retaining-wall-comes-into-focus.html