Estabrook Woods, Concord - an(other) broad brush description of rock pile sites

Let me try again with that Estabrook Map:

Here is a map of Estabrook Woods with blue outlines showing areas with one or more clusters of rock piles. In a minute we'll look at some pictures from the area above "Farmer's Cliff" on the map and, in particular, the rock piles near the Boaz Brown cellar hole.

One notices a swath of sites at the southern end of the woods and a few more at the northern end. I have not looked too carefully in the area west of "Corly Pate Hill" and I know there were a few piles and split wedged rocks over near Middlesex school (where the topo line wiggle) but those piles may be gone by this stage of the school's expansion. I believe this site distribution is well correlated to brook access and water sources. Take a close look: The southern sites, except at Punkatasset, are at the top of brooks flowing south. The northern sites - at the north end of Estabrook Rd (Kibbe's Cellar hole) and the north end of Two Rod road (Stearns Str in Carlisle) - have sites near wetlands and brooks that flow north into Spencer Brook before heading south (past lots of other sites in Acton and Carlisle).

The exceptions test the rule: Punkatasset has piles on its northern slope, and Annursnac Hill, the other major hill north of the rive, has them on its southern slope. I imagine a slightly different reason explains the location of these sites on hillsides rather than at brook sources. Also testing the rule: the blank space west of Corly Pate Hill has no water sources, no brooks leading up to it, and is correspondingly blank. So look: they paddled up the river, as far as they could, sought out the highest headwaters (and hills overlooking them) and constructed rock piles.

Estabrook FYI

It's my home town, so I've had a chance to be almost thorough (but not almost Thoreau). Almost invariably, sites are at the tops of brooks.

A perched rock, like a turtle carapace- Estabrook Woods, Concord

Norman will remember this rock. Let's also remember Steve Ells who was with us that day. We all knew the rock before we knew each other.

Please note the smaller rocks holding up the "carapace".

Let me mention some location information: In Estabrook  Woods, the main north-south road up to the Estabrook cellar holes passes what is called "Mink Pond" on the right. Somewhere a bit north of that on the road, a side trail splits off to the west and takes you over to the Boaz Brown cellar holes and then Hugh Cargill Rd. I think there is more than one side trail and you want the southern of the two. That side trail is in the background of the above photo. You can almost see where the wall lets the trail through But here, just across that trail, is a long rock pile, I have seen in the past: 
(From the end)

(From below)

Here is what is important to remember (aside from the glories of the Boaz Brown site, which I will get to in due course): behind that long pile, to the left, is a slope that rises to a lookout place over aforementioned "Mink Pond" and the location of Concord's main chambered burial mounds. So find the "Turtle" and you'll find some of the most interesting larger rock piles of the town. In fact, off in that direction towards Dakin's Brook are more separate clusters of rock piles than anywhere else in the woods.

NEARA Video

I think this is nicely done.

Pretty out there

Walking around Estabrook Woods in Concord.

NEARA Fall Meeting

NEARA 2016 Fall Meeting Follow the Above Link to View the Exciting Speakers and Field Trips Scheduled for  New England Antiquities Research Association's Fall Meeting October 28-30, 2016 Hope to See You There!

Mapping the Mosier Mounds

The Significance of Rock Feature Complexes on the Southern Columbia Plateau

Thomas J. Connolly et al - Journal of Archaeological Science (1997) 24, 289–300

https://www.academia.edu/6654642/Mapping_the_Mosier_Mounds_The_Significance_of_Rock_Feature_Complexes_on_the_Southern_Columbia_Plateau

Pacific Ocean "Antiquity"

Some videos that might be of interest to NEARA enthusiasts: at the POOF site.

Quick Report #3 - Site B at Warren Brook Upton

I saw another opening in a wall and went though it hoping to find rock piles. There is one! But it seemed isolated. I took a couple pictures:

This is at the top of a gradual slope leading down-eventually into Warren Brook. A cliff-like outcrop is behind us. The slope with blueberries and a few trees looked empty but it made sense to take a look around anyway. So I headed downhill and quite soon spotted a rectangular pile with a hollow:

And then other large-rocked piles, like the first one I saw.

In the next, noting the large rocks in the foreground, these could be part of the structure. Perhaps this is another rectangle with "hollow".)

Sorry to describe this so hastily. The site is one of those "eerie" places that belongs on the short list of places that are most worth visiting. 

Signs of recent use:

On a nearby knoll, some decrepit piles and these:

These piles would all have been visible from the flat area where there was a rectangle with a hollow. So I regard them as a sort of "satellite" pile. This is quite typical of sites with those kind of rectangles.

What a privilege to get to see this place.

Quick Report #2 Site A at Warren Brook

I told you a bit about site "A" in this previous post. A small site, along the slopes of a gully, with triangular piles and a few other things. This is the place with two well-made entrances through the enlcosing walls. Another feature is that the piles at the southern end of the site were taller than at the northern end. I have come to think that a height increase, across a site, indicates that the piles are farther and farther away from where they are viewed. So if this is at one end of the site:

and this is at the other:

But these piles may be way too particular for that conclusion.
I hate to skip nice pictures. Here is my first view of the site, as I was walking along a wall:

Some of the triangles:

Another view of the site (taller piles in not visible in the distance, but in that direction)

I liked this one:

Funny shaped rock. Looks like it was worked. Another little corner:

Here are two beauties:

I note quartz in the wall at another corner of the enclosing walls:

Quick report #1 - Kezar Hill Gully

[For me a "gully" is a small ravine and a ravine is a narrow steep sided valley.]
See the small blue outline above the word "Kezar" on this map fragment. I walked across a dull flat hill in the direction of the gully and it was only blind luck that I got there at the exact points were a small sub-gully entered the main one and had its own little rock pile site at the top. At the bottom of that same sub-gully there as one more pile that looked slightly different from the ones above.
View down the sub -gully:

The typical piles:

[Looking at the picture, I am a little surprised to see a beer can. We are way out in the woods here, off trail. Maybe something about the landscape leads people to this place.]

This was the best pile. A hint of a vertical side.

Down at the edge of bottom of the main gully, was this last pile:

In person, it looked bigger than the ones up the sub-gully.

A Brief Exegesis on Inventorying Field Stone Piles (North Dakota)

Posted on January 23, 2012 by admin

“I’m just wrapping up a report on some field stone piles, and thought it might be worth a brief post.

Field stone piles are, of course ubiquitous in cultivated fields.  Sometimes they are obviously of recent origin, sometimes it is hard to tell.   The problem out here on the Plains is that Native American peoples have built and used cairns for a variety of reasons (including burials).  When we do an archaeological survey, we want to be carefully not to write a cairn off as a field stone pile.  Aggravating this issue has been the mixed rigor and accuracy of field stone pile identification in standard archaeological surveys. Universities don’t teach seminars on field stone piles, and in fieldwork (by necessity) we record them pretty quickly. I have seen cases where piles that were obviously made with a bulldozer are identified as prehistoric cairns, and I’ve seen cairns written off as field stone piles.

The North Dakota Department of Transportation is now requiring a survey of field stone piles that have been sold for use as road fill [this happens fairly frequently].  A few times in the recent past, construction equipment has revealed that what everyone assumed was a field stone pile was a cairn (and a burial).    Much of this re-evaluation is being driven by Tribal Historic Preservation Offices (especially at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate)..."

http://www.whitewashedtomb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/cairn.jpg

http://www.whitewashedtomb.com/?p=127

 Richard Rothaus: http://independent.academia.edu/RichardRothaus

Intriguing picture from New Zealand video

(I like the shape of the hill, too)

Warren Brook in Upton

Taken from the Upton Trail Maps for Warren Brook:

Another place I have been before, this time I entered via Oak Knoll Ln. Stayed left off the trail and then stayed left again when I was drawn downhill, to the lower wetter area. Somewhere in there - a rectangle with a hollow:

But onward: I was walking along a wall looking across, at "A", when I saw some piles on the other side. It was a site, with triangular piles and others, somewhat like a marker pile site. This place was enclosed with stone walls and there were two well formed entrances near the top of the site. 
(A)Entrance 1:

(A)Entrance 2:

I'll come back to showing some pictures of the place but what seems quite interesting is that, later in the walk, I came to another break in a wall (at "B1") and had the hunch to look for rock piles beyond and it worked. With one significant difference: this break was poorly made, obviously just pushed through the existing wall. So [bear with me] if the wall is of the same age in both places then the first site pre-dates the wall and the second one post-dates it.
(B1) Entrance, looking back from inside the site:

See the difference? 
To exaggerate: here some piles from site "A":

and here are some from "B2":

Something of an entirely different sort from what was at "A". 
Anyway, while talking generalities about "A" and the "B"s, let me mention that in the past I found a really nice site in there that I did not see on this walk (second time I have failed to relocate it) but I think it is downstream from "B", near where I put the "?".
[Still have too much to blog about: the details of these places in Upton and of the gully at Kezar hill.]