Up along Justice Brook (Sterling, MA)

Massachusetts Highway in May

[Not rock pile related]. The beauty of this place is not lost on me and I thought perhaps people who live far from Massachusetts might be interested in how the place looks. A bit of that here:

Today's plan

It is elaborate enough, I thought it might be interesting to look at the places I hope to visit during today's hike. I have been scratching at areas around Keyes and Justice Brooks. Today I hope to get back to the main site I found two weeks ago (far right and uphill, in this fragment):

My instincts are to find the folds in the land, and the knolls overlooking where brooks meet. Wish me luck. I trick myself out of the house with promises of donuts and relaxation. I'll start at the far left in East Princeton, where there is a playground I can park at.
Update: Starting at the upper left and going clockwise, I found things at the 2nd and 4th red outline. After that, I got lost.

Top of the water example - West Sterling

Just a note. This spot, a bit of a saddle, is the kind of place one should always explore when looking for rock pile sites. Here is about as minimal an example you are likely to see:

So I was passing that spot, and found three rock piles in a row:

While I am mentioning it, about underneath the cross-hair on the map, was a big wall bulge. Getting there is quite a slog, believe me:

In case you are interested in old mills, the one down by the river in East Princeton is well worth a visit, or perhaps a picnic and a dip on a summer day:

Just don't get swept away

Power Lines (Woodbury CT)

   Every once in a while Peter will post something here about finding something by various Power Lines in (mostly) Massachusetts.

   Over the last 28 years, I’ve walked along (and posted a little bit here now and again) about Ceremonial Stone Landscape features under and around the power lines that cut through the Nonnewaug Preserve in Woodbury CT.

  And at my blog too:

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=power+lines

  I've probably lost more photos than I have collected here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/34580529@N04/albums/72157654175069696/with/17982460553/

   Entering my 29^th year of independent research, I went back up to this area of great Archaeological Sensitivity above the historically known Nonnewaug Wigwams, and find it’s all changing fast, one more chapter torn from the Pootatuck History Book:

I could hear all this happening while I was sick as a dog and home bound, taking Ceftriaxone IV.

 There's some stonework revealed by brush clearing, but I couldn't walk any farther...

I'm pretty sure that this spot has been bulldozed away:

Rock Piles in Lost in Space

Project Hatchet. Burial Mound w/ pit. G12

From Dennis D:
All alone...in the deep woods of NE  Conn. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgOXHJqSj74

Best of its class - a nice pile from South Justice

Too much sunlight for good photos.

Videos from "South Justice" Hill

I had the rare pleasure to step into a major site for the first time last weekend. First time for me and first time for the site. One of those occasions when you step forward and, with each step, you see another pile, larger than the one before. A first large site for Sterling.

Unfortunately it was a bright sunny day and the photos are more or less unintelligible. So here are some videos, from north to south.

(Sorry for the down home accent. Apparently I have a subconscious desire to sound folksey.)

Fixing the racism of the Massachusetts State Flag

[Via the Nolumbeka Project] The state seal and flag show a Native American under a threatening sword.

https://mailchi.mp/ccbf559170cd/breaking-news?e=99ae110599

This and That

Well, I’ll tell you about this (above) so that I can tell you about that (below):

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2018/04/wanderingabout-following-path-only.html

Some road names in Sterling MA

Tim M. questioned me about "North Row Rd". I can find no "South Row Rd", but there is an "Upper North Row Rd". Here's the evidence:

Headwaters of Rocky Brook - Sterling MA

This is an area particularly rich in individual rock piles and small sites. I came back here thinking there were some "upper valleys" on the right hand side of the map fragment, where I had not been. This included parking on Upper North Row Rd, next to the old road, heading down the hill and exploring up the valley of the brook there - Rocky Brook and seeing what there was to see.
There is actually a site right next to the road and up behind one of the houses there. As I stepped into the woods I encountered the edges of that site. Looking back towards the road:

Piles made from quartz are rare around here. I only remember seeing one other (Blanchard Rd...somewhere). Continuing:

There is a good amount of quartz in the rock around there, so I found lots of quartz in the walls and piles. Here, a stray rock-on-rock:

And there is something interesting down next to the brook:

It took a while to process this. I was thinking it was a dam (see previously posted video) but actually you can see it is a road coming across from the upper left down to the brook. In this next picture you can see the road going down and across the brook.

Here is another view. I am afraid I never really captured a good sense of the shape of the thing:

The first thing I noticed coming up to it were the strategically placed chunks of quartz, but none show up in these photos. Also there is a distinct shape to the structure which I could not make sense of. It could be another one of those brook-side mounds I generalized about recently (at the end of this post). 

One thought was that the structure was part of a mill and the 'road' was actually a millrace. But no, it goes off next to a pile of smaller rocks, and remains a road:

Seen from the brook, there is a pile with colored quartz:

It is easy, at this time of year, to see faint hints of trail on the ground. It can give you hints of where the foot traffic was. In this previous photo, I see a bit of trail from down to the colored quartz from the pile of small rocks above. Closeup, a pretty rock:

Here is a view of the large structure from above - (the colored rock pile is to the left, and there are chunks of quartz in fore- and back-ground.

Note the short stretch of wall to the upper right (again, here:)

Again, there are hints of trails, showing us how people may have moved around these structures. And there is a reasonably clear association of trails and old roads with this palce. Someone interested in surveying should go have a close look at this. 

In the woods nearby (south of the brook):

And other examples of quartz:

As I say, it is an area full of small features. Like this one from lower down the same brook, a place of gurgling water:

A couple other things worth showing - a "corner bulge"

 And a rock on rock with some parallelism between the rock shapes.

Would you want to make something of this?

More appetizer

This is near the top of Rocky Brook Sterling

Appetizer

Sunday, April 29 - Friends of Pinehawk Community Service Day

Here is a notice from the Friends of Pine Hawk.

Sunday, April 29 - Friends of Pine Hawk Community Service Day

A new Acton trail is in its infancy!  To be called the Nashoba Trail (NT), it will be an extension of the Trail Through Time (TTT).  It will begin on the newly opened Bruce Freeman Rail Trail (BFRT), and wind through a series of town open spaces to connect with the Sarah Doublet Forest in Littleton. The NT project will be sponsored jointly by Littleton's and Acton's Conservation Trusts.  The first section of this new trail will be a short link that connects the TTT to the BFRT.

That's where local volunteers can help on Sunday, April 29, 2018 at 1 PM. The effort will focus on clearing brush and tidying up this link which has existed informally between the stone chamber and the old railroad bed since before the NorthBriar subdivision was developed.  Please RSVP to Linda McElroy at 978-429-8000 or Bob Ferrara at rferrara@mit.edu or 978-263-8642.  Also you are welcome to join the group for lunch beforehand at 11:30 at Legends Cafe in West Acton. 

Cheers, Linda McElroy & Bob Ferrara

N.B. You are receiving this notice because you asked to be notified of Friends of Pine Hawk activities. If you wish to unsubscribe, please e-mail pinehawk@mit.edu.  

Sweet potato news

[Also not rock pile related]
Someone smarter than me needs to read this. It seems to be saying: the sweet potato was in Polynesia more than 800,000 years ago, therefore it was brought to Polynesia by Polynesians on their way back from the Americas. Hun?....What?

Could someone explain that to me? I am so skeptical of the nonsense geneticists serve up to bolster conventional archaeology, I cannot tell if the article is the usual nonsense, or if it has some kind of logic that escapes me. You decide:
https://phys.org/news/2013-01-sweet-potato-dna-early-polynesians.html#nRlv

Headless Tuna Found in Gloucester Woods

[Not rock pile related but too good to miss.]
See here.

Scheduled Talks by Doug Harris

(via Kathy Taylor):

Ceremonial Stone Landscapes 

Tribes want to work with town's historical commissions with memorandums of understanding for identification and preservation of ceremonial stone landscapes

[click to enlarge]

Doug Harris talk is tonight and tomorrow

In Acton and Harvard.