Mike Luoma's book on Ancient Stone Mysteries

Congratulations to another author, writing about ceremonial stone landscapes:

https://ancientstonemysteries.com/The-Book/

Indian Barns

I'm reasonably sure this is the foundation and not the "Indian Barns mentioned in the text:

   “The Stephen Talkhouse Pharoah house was used by Pharoah later in his life. The house featured two “Indian barns” as food storage, and a footpath toward Bridgehampton on it’s edge.

The foundation remains today, but the house may have been a wood cabin during its use…The shallow pits to the north of the foundation, known locally as, “Indian barns,” were most likely covered with woven thatch and used for food storage…”

https://nativelongisland.com/listing/stephen-talkhouse-pharoah-house/

From the "Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society," Vol. 23, Nos. 3 and 4 Massachusetts Archaeological Society (July 1962):

 “These underground barns have been opened or reported in modern times in such widely scattered places as the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts and Vermont, Ware River Valley, Sudbury Valley, Plymouth County, South Woodstock, Connecticut, and Kennebec Valley in Maine. Occasionally, the character of the contents is still identifiable. Storage pits have been frequently referred to by early writers, as may be seen by William Bradford's account: In November, 1620, just before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, they ran into storages on Cape Cod, under "heap's'of sand newly padled with their hands which they, digging up, found in them diverce faire Indean baskets filled with corne, and in some eares, faire and good, of diverce collours . . . a very goodly sight," for which, at a later date the newcomers gave them "full satisfaction . . . to their good contente."

 Other early commentators record the presence and use of earth storages on Long Island (very numerous in 1642), in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and in Southern Maine. However, none have been recorded in Maine east of the Penobscot, (Burrage).

  By what characteristics would an archaeologist recognize such an Indian storage pit?

A number of early explorers and colonists have described vividly such storages here in Massachusetts. The record of Champlain, on Cape Cod, is admirably clear (1604): "They make trenches in the sand on the slope of the hills, some five or six feet deep, more or less. Putting their corn and other grains into large grass sacks, they throw them into these trenches, and cover them with sand three or four feet above the surface of the earth, taking it out as their needs require. In this way it is preserved as well as it would be possible to do in our granaries."

 Morton, in his New England Canaan, adds details: "Their barns are holes made in the earth, that will hold a Hogshead of corne a peece in them. In these, (when their corne is out of the huske and well dried) they lay their store in greate baskets ... with mats under, about the sides, and on the top; and putting it into the place made for it, they cover it with earth."

 John Winthrop, Jr., Governor of Connecticut (1657), mentions that their underground barns were "well lined with withered Grass and with Matts" before being covered. The contents, he observes, "Kept very well." Wood, in his New England Prospect (1634) reports a slightly different practice: "Their corne being ripe, they gather it and drying it harde in the sun conveigh it to their barnes, which be great holes digged in the ground in the form of a brasse pot seeled with the rinds" (bark) "of trees."

 

https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1088&context=bmas

“Pre-contact basketry was intimately related to women's subsistence and economic activities which centered on the production and distribution of food, and it is this cultural feature that enabled women to accumulate wealth and positions of cultural authority.  The household/clan/com economy of the pre-contact Algonquin coincided with the "Old Birch-bark Hunting Culture" in which women were skilled experts in birch-bark technology. Using birch bark, women erected quick and efficient shelters, made light-weight waterproof utensils and covers for canoe frames (Butler and Hadlock 7). Few original birch-bark articles have survived; however, colonial records describe several uses of birch-bark construction that played significant economic roles within women' s com and household economy. Because birch-bark is durable, waterproof, odorless, tasteless and resistant to decay, it protects stored items, such as food, from spoiling. "Equally important was the fact that enough birch-bark for the Indian's needs was almost always just outside their wigwams" (Butler and Hadlock 6-7). Birch-bark was symbiotic with Algonquin women's com economy; for example, women used sheets of birch-bark to sun-dry their com, they stored dried com in bushel size birch-bark baskets, and they lined the underground walls of their "Indian barns" (underground granary) with birch-bark…”

From Fishing Weirs to Fancy  Baskets: How Changes in Native American Basketry Forms Reflect Changes in the Economic Independence of Native American Women during Colonization - Heidi J. Pickering (2010)

  https://creativematter.skidmore.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1074&context=mals_stu_schol

From "Native Tech:"

http://www.nativetech.org/brchbark/barkcont.html

Reproductions:

 

Lifted from: https://www.gp-award.com/en/produkte/birch-food-container

Atlatl counterweights and banner stones

This guy has interesting things to say. 

(1) Atlatl Weights as a Counter Balance - YouTube

A little rhyolite blade from Dennis MA

A pretty material. This is smoothed out from being in the water.

Perhaps my prettiest find - Raynham MA Arrowhead

Very lucky, I was inspecting every square inch and it payed off. It comes as a great surprise when you are actually looking at an arrowhead, after so many hours inspecting every square inch and not seeing anything. The shape is usually a surprise too. 

This is a bit like a stemmed Squibnocket point, a bit like a Stark Point. Here is a bit of video:

It is hard to put my finger on a feeling that I don't deserve to find such a beautiful thing. Where does the guilt come from - the feeling that someone will suddenly appear and take it back? As I drove home, crossing over the Bourne Bridge, thinking: well at least I got it back to Cape Cod. 

Norman Muller - retrospective

(19) 07a - Norm Muller Tribute - YouTube

Blade from Sandwich MA

A bit crude but I am happy to find something there - at Scornton Creek and Rt 6A. 

I thought it was a bit of clam shell but it was this. A light colored argillite material. Use wear on the tip.

Pocemtuck Festival - Aug 5, 6

 

I wrote a book: A Shadow Under The Rock

MOVED TO SIDEBAR ---->

Now on Amazon. 

A visit to the Robbins Museum - Home of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society.

Went to visit what is surely one of the great displays of arrowheads to be seen anywhere. I have complex thoughts about how most of museum's pieces rival my own best finds. And about mortality: The folks who collected those arrowheads are as gone as the people who made them. At the same time those beautiful points mean much less to me than my own finds. I am already forgetting the stories of how I found my own and, when they end up in the museum my sense of their beauty will be gone. Meanwhile, look at this!

These are the shouldered points I am most enamored with at the moment. Never found any in Concord like those.

A fine display:

Liking the "green" argillite:

Gregg Lott, VP of the MAS

Jake ...(could not catch the last name). President of MAS.

Knowledgeable guys, and friendly. Continuing:

These are said to be atlatl counterweights

And here are a lot more:

I think these displays are in very good taste.

Wow.

North Shore Cape Cod Arrowhead

A young colleague, Spencer Chosse, told me about this place. I was looking hard and got very lucky. The beach environment offers many hundreds of rocks per square foot but I had slowed down in one place, because there were a few more broken rocks than I'd been seeing. In this one spot, I was looking at each of the rocks. This one could just as well have turned out to be nothing. That is the real luck.

Update: I should include this as well:

The beauty of simple things

 

Tidal Flats - another intersection between arrowheads and rock piles

I was hunting for arrowheads on the tidal flats of Barnstable MA and saw a couple of stone structures while I was at it. One was a modern arrow pointing to a peace symbol and a heart symbol - all made from piled cobbles below the high tide line. But I thought this, in the foreground, was a familiar pattern from the ancient world:

You see an outline with a larger rock at one end. 

BTW, hunting for small bits of flaked rock against this visual background is exhausting.

Quartz artifacts from North Shore of Cape Cod

A walk around the neighborhood

Every time I look more carefully, I find more rock piles in the backyards of the mansions around the Woods Hole Golf Course. There used to be a site that stretched from Gansett over to the fire station. Today, it is mostly well tended grass.

See that one over on the left?

Happy solstice

 Enjoy the day.

Attleboro Rhyolite - a nice example from southern New England

 

Everyone likes nice stone tool work.

News about the Nashoba Praying Indians

Dear Friends of the Nashobah Praying Indians,

 

We have a big announcement today – Strong Bear Medicine is moving to town [Littleton] in July! 

 

He will be living on Nashobah Praying Indian ancestral land in a location that is significant to his people.

 

It’s been around 300 years since the last known Praying Indian (Sarah Doublet) lived in town on Praying Indian Plantation land.  This is a really big deal, not only to Bear and his people, but to the community as well.  After all these years, this is an amazing turn of events. 

 

When Strong Bear gets settled in, he will be planning and hosting cultural events in town and the local area, and we expect to see a lot of him, both with this and around town. 

I will keep you updated on Nashobah events – you will be the first to know – and on ways we can help the Nashobah as they become part of the community.  There are several such things that come to mind, more on this in upcoming updates.

 

Next week I’ll have an update on the next step of the Nashobah book project, and will be looking for people to help bring it forward.  (We need to get the book into the local libraries, historical societies, schools, etc.)

Best wishes!

Dan

Dreaming of the Pawnee Grasslands - highly polished tools

I did not realize at the time that these were the same sorts of implement. It makes me want to go back to the Pawnee Grasslands of Colorado and look for others.

The lower left edge is sharpened and damaged. The back side of the orange one has some hard-use abrasion:

I have to say, these rocks were more confusing than usual. First of all, what are these things? And second of all, why are they both so polished?

Well I am going to say they are some kind of swiss army knife - combining a cutting edge with an abrading surface. 

It took me a while to remember what makes rocks so shiny. It is when they have spent a long time in someone pocket. So I am only speculating that these people were very mobile. They kept their best swiss army knife with them. These tools spent a lot of time in someone's pocket.

Concord arrowheads

A colleague, Spencer, found these in my old hometown: