Autumn Leaves on Stones (ME)

From:

wondermyway

https://wondermyway.com/2018/09/22/summer-marches-on/

Odd-looking?? (Lyme CT)

"An odd-looking piece of stonewall construction..."

Found here:

http://davidreikandjudithlohmanpictures.blogspot.com/2018/09/2018-9-1-nayantaquit-trails-lyme-ct.html

Korean Burial Mound

I was looking online for Korean burials. This reminds me a bit of some stone chambers.

Also, gotta admit, that shape reminds of something....

Rock Pile - Fall Colors Begin

All by itself.

Understanding Wendell MA

    I just became aware that: "A group that’s protesting state plans to start logging at Wendell State Forest is preparing a petition calling for a halt in those plans as well as a weekly Saturday protest along Route 2 on Saturday (Sept. 22 2018)."
https://www.recorder.com/Group-protests-planned-Wendell-State-Forest-cutting-20322323

     And then I click my way to this article that states: " A group of collaborating Native American tribes has offered to work with Massachusetts towns to identify landscapes of ceremonial or religious significance to their heritage, and Wendell is taking them up on that...The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and the Pequot, Mohegan and Narragansett tribes are collaborating on this and have signed a memorandum of understanding with Wendell to share authority of sites of an indigenous nature."
https://www.recorder.com/Working-to-preserve-Native-American-sites-in-Wendell-13328361
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a230104914e6b1c9b2dfddb/t/5b7de89521c67c7f4f5d4292/1534978203963/Wendell+SF+cultural+resource+emergency+report+4-9-18sm.pdf

     A Google Image search brings up a whale of an example of Sacred Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscape feature:

http://www.waymarking.com/gallery/image.aspx?f=1&guid=ac137a9c-baf4-4381-8135-9b74f6783f20

   I consider that it's "State Land," and the State is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

   Not all that far from the Turners Falls Ceremonial Hill.
    I think I'm beginning to understand...

http://benkimballphotography.blogspot.com/2015/08/bonus-site-mormon-hollow-at-wendell.html

https://www.mass.gov/locations/wendell-state-forest

Hopkinton Development - poking around

Thanks to Tim MacSweeney for the previous post. Reading the newspaper article, let me quote:

Chairman Michael Roughan told the members last week they only have jurisdiction over structures under the town’s Demolition Delay Bylaw and there is not much they can do.
“Unfortunately, stone structures and burial markers are not subject to a demolition permit,” he said.
In an interpretation of the town bylaw, Donna Brewer, who works for Town Counsel Ray Miyares, encouraged the board to speak with the Mass. Historical Commission
“Structures that do not require a building/demolition permit cannot be addressed through this bylaw chapter,” Brewer wrote.

Why are they quoting town demolition bylaws when NAGPRA is relevant? It is not surprising that the Historical Commission would be out of touch but what about the Native Americans?

UPDATE: Well I walked around and did not see anything....so false alarm?

Hopkinton Commission "Weighs In" Concerning Indigenous Stone Structures

HOPKINTON — Based on the opinion of two area tribal experts, several members of the Historical Commission want to further investigate the existence of indigenous ceremonial and cultural features between Chamberlain Street and Whalen Road...

Full Story:

https://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/20180910/hopkinton-commission-weighs-indigenous-structures

Behind the Wrentham Outlets

Moving on to the next spot along Rt 495, I am not sure what watershed this is in - south of a "Lake Pearl", almost the Ten Mile River. Today the eastern part of that woods shown here is all retail outlets.

This is another pretty routine site discovery. Perhaps the best part of the story would be how I had decided to stay as close to water as possible (staying to the left in the picture) and gave up at the same moment that I was actually standing next to a rock pile:

I had gotten over to the edge of the wetland, as planned, and did not see much. These woods, especially along this wetland edge, had sketchy stone walls - almost broken into piles but barely meriting closer study. So when I got over here I am thinking "Well this is a disappointment....hmm that is almost a rock pile". Thinking this might be part of the loose wall, along this little ridge, I stepped a bit to the side (left in the above) and saw another -kinda- pile.

Just to be a little systematic, I stepped to the side again (left in picture), and prepared to call it quits, when something larger "loomed" in the distance:

Ooh baby! Let's have a look:

 Quartz at the midpoint:

 From below

Beautiful. This mound and the smaller satellites were in a line along a ridge, actually an esker, next to the water. Here is a view, with a dirt bike trail in the foreground: 

A bit to the right, was one other satellite, that I missed on the way in, and spotted on the way out.

That's it. My only comment is that this is like a marker pile site because the piles were, in fact, evenly spaced and in a line (the last pile was on a perpendicular line, if any) and the mound did not have a hollow. It reminded me of one other place off Red Coat Lane in Concord. As I look for a previous post on it, I found this site, also in Estabrook woods. But I cannot find the "Red Coat Lane" post - a mound like the one in today's report - also an oval with satellite piles next to the water. If you cannot find the report, enter the woods on the private trail on Red Coat Lane, and keep your eyes peeled as you walk in. The mound is on the left in the first 1/4 mile.

Sacred Site to Solar Farm

Now and again, it is pondered here if some sites are still remembered, still visited by Indigenous People, who still use these sites for Ceremony, who mourn the loss of every piece of the Sacred Landscape...

(All Photos by Cora)

Cultural Landscapes: In the Eye of the Beholder (King)

   Not the best produced video visually, and I'm only partway through watching it, but it is from the National Park Service:
   "This webinar was produced as part of the ArcheoThursday Topics in Archeology Webinar Series hosted by the Archeology Program of the National Park Service, Washington D.C. office. The series was partly supported with help from Archaeology Southwest. For this webinar, Michael Roller invited archeologist, preservationist and author Tom King to present on research associated with the series theme of archeological landscapes.
Presentation Abstract: Archaeologists are often called upon to identify and evaluate all kinds of historic places, including cultural landscapes. In doing so, it’s important to remember one’s cultural anthropology. Cultural landscape identification and evaluation are essentially ethnographic operations. One needs to find the people – indigenous groups, local residents, visitors – who value the landscape and see if they’ll tell you what they value and why. Then think about how these values relate to the National Register criteria. It’s especially important to think about “integrity” with reference to the views of those who value a place. The fact that a place may have been modified in the past, that its soils may be disturbed, even that it may seem completely screwed up to you doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s lost integrity in the eyes of those who value it. In the end it’s their values, not yours, that matter most."

https://youtu.be/dkEEyX44reA

I'll also be exploring his blog: http://crmplus.blogspot.com/

Thomas F. King holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of California Riverside (1976), and has worked since the 1960s in the evolving fields of research and management variously referred to as heritage, cultural resource management, and historic preservation.  He is particularly known for his work with Section 106 of the U.S. National Historic Preservation Act, and with indigenous and other traditional cultural places.

King is the author and editor of ten textbooks and tradebooks (See http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-F.-King/e/B001IU2RWK/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1353864454&sr=1-2-ent)  as well as scores of journal articles, popular articles, and internet offerings on heritage topics.  His career includes the conduct of archaeological research in California and the Micronesian islands, management of academy-based and private cultural resource consulting organizations, helping establish government historic preservation systems in the freely associated states of Micronesia, oversight of U.S. government project review for the federal government’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, service as a litigant and expert witness in heritage-related lawsuits, and extensive work as a consultant and educator in heritage-related topics.  He is the co-author of the U.S. National Park Service's government-wide guidance on "traditional cultural properties" (TCPs; see http://www.nps.gov/nr/publications/bulletins/pdfs/nrb38.pdf).  He occasionally teaches short classes about historic preservation project review, traditional cultural places, and consultation with indigenous groups, and consults and writes as TFKing PhD LLC.  Current major clients include several American Indian tribes and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. 

Since 1989 King has also served as volunteer Senior Archaeologist on The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery’s Amelia Earhart Project, testing the hypothesis that the famous aviation pioneer landed and died on Nikumaroro Island in the Republic of Kiribati.  His co-authored book, Amelia Earhart’s Shoes, was published by AltaMira Press in 2001, with an updated paperback edition in 2004 (See www.tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/BookReviews/shoesreview.html), His historical novel Thirteen Bones, about the 1940 discovery of Earhart's remains, was published in 2009 (See http://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Bones-Tom-King-Thomas/dp/1608441857/ref=la_B001IU2RWK_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1353864465&sr=1-6).    

Here too I'll be doing some reading: https://independent.academia.edu/ThomasKing3

Crying Out for Rocky Woods (East Freetown MA)

Metacomet's (or "Prince Phillip's") "Cave"

Photo – Sera Bray

   Heartbreaking...
http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2018/08/crying-out-for-rocky-woods.html

Split filled rocks in Ireland

Let me recommend the photography of Rebecca Latson:

Borrowed from here: https://www.rebeccalatsonphotography.com/International/Ireland/i-nJcQjzF/A

East of the Franklin Water Tower

Going back and forth to the Cape is taking my explorations further south. I have been doing bits and pieces of Franklin for several years, Wrentham next and, eventually, Foxboro. I have been skipping Milford since Bruce MacAleer already showed me how that town is packed with rock piles. Somehow it is less fun to re-discover, so I have skipped Milford. Of course there are plenty of towns between Concord and Cape Cod and I have my work cut out for me. Anyway, here is a little piece of the map I have been looking at for a while, so I got out there last weekend. The water tower is located about at the cross-hair. After weeks away from the woods my hands were itching and curling spontaneously as I stepped out from under the power lines. Ah, the smell of hay scented ferns!
And of course there was a beautiful mound right there, which I showed previously. Here are other views. Interesting that someone would set up a camp (now abandoned) right there.

You can see the hollow better in these side views:

I do not see "corners" and the kind of rectangular shape I am used to seeing further north. This is no longer the Nashua watershed, but the sample is too small to conclude things about differences in styles of burial mounds. In fact, on this walk, there were several very different types of rock pile "mounds".

I continued south along the edge of the power lines. Having found this first mound (above) it made sense to stick to that topography, although I was headed for the headwater lake in the lower right of the map fragment. Here is a different mound, different shape, different age:

Nothing much to see. Here is another:

and another:

This one was actually quite tall, it does not show in the photo and, generally, I am sorry the pictures are not very clear. (I think an iPhone takes low contrast photos, without depth of field.)

I saw several examples like this:

This is a mixed soil/rock material in the shape of a "flattened donut" meaning the hole is not round but long and thin - more like a casket shape. There were several like this. The photos do not tell us much:

At this last place, there were several rocks-on-boulder piles, adjacent:

All in all, not too exciting. It seems that people over a wide stretch of time made there way up to this place from the water below. This is the Seven Mile River, heading south into Pawtucket.

There were a few other rock piles in there but most of the larger items were up by the power lines.

Got a walk in, planning another

Haven't seen one of these in a while, more later about it:

Another Stone Complex (GA)

More Rock Piles/Mounds

A large group of stone structures in the Chattahoochee National Forest

"A large, flat-topped oval mound, with large rocks stacked on top of a rock ledge base.   At one end was an upright stone that stood like an altar;   Sheldon H. stands next to it for scale.   The structure's form has been somewhat ruined due to blow-down of some large trees that had taken root in the mound..." 

More: https://www.be-roberts.com/se/snant/beng1.htm

Random Rock Pile

With only occasional exploring on the way back and forth to the Cape, I have seen almost nothing this summer. Stepping into the woods after a couple weeks away and it is a sheer relief to breathe in the hay-scented fern. Here was a one place where I saw an isolated pile, across Belcher Rd from Foolish Hill in Foxboro:

I will try harder today, when I head back in the other direction.

Oh yes, and this: an Ebony Spleenwort:

Mystery Stone Structures in Connecticut

Fieldstone cairns at the Werge Easement, Thompson, Ct.
 November 4, 2017      

http://burgersonion.blogspot.com/2017/11/mystery-stone-structures-in-connecticut.html

Stone Ax head

From Michael Hoye:

This was dug up this week in West Springfield Ma on Chestnut Street. In a back yard next to a residence. 

Rock Piles on a Farm in Saskatchewan

A nice account:
https://merlemassie.wordpress.com/2015/09/17/rockpiles/

riddle-rock-piles-effigies-and-enigmas-southeastern-mystery-story

https://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion-guest-authors/riddle-rock-piles-effigies-and-enigmas-southeastern-mystery-story-part-i-021393