(again, all these photos are from a damaged disk, and colors may be off)
Since Norman mentioned rock piles with chambers in them, I'll start with this picture. It's possible that someone was just playing Jenga and managed to get a stone out, leaving a hollow, but it seemed possible at the time that the space had been left for offerings.
The question has come up whether the sticks leaning on piles have sometimes been placed as homage to whatever the rock pile represents. I don't know the answer to that one. Sticks can be found all over the ground in the woods. It seems reasonable that some would just fall on rock piles. On the other hand it would therefore be an ideal way to honor the site in an unnoticeable way. We can only see the sticks and wonder. I used to remove sticks before taking pictures, but there's really no reason to.This is the same rock pile from another angle. Someone did a nice job making this one.
Here's one of the walls on the same site.
Here is a picture of the inside of a rock shelter we found at the top of the hill above the rock pile site.
And here's the rock shelter. It's probably naturally-occurring. Pretty difficult to wield that huge boulder on rocky and sloping ground. Nevertheless, it would have been noticed and possibly used by the people who built the rock piles.
That shelter was part of a ridge of boulders that ran along the top of the hill. An interesting feature at this site was a low wall that started some distance down the hill, then ran up the hill at an angle, eventually almost meeting the rock ridge at a cliff or bluff. I'll post pictures of the walls and bluff next time. Was this a hunting site?
Someone in email made a comment about possible hunting blinds in the midst of a cairn field. I figure it is either all hunting blings or all ceremonial cairns but not a mixture of the two. Of course there were different periods in the past.
ReplyDeleteYou're probably right. These piles may just have been for hiding behind. But for most cultures a long time ago, hunting did involve ceremonies and rituals, just different ones from those connected with burials or those seasonal astronomical rituals that were often connected with planting. I don't know that this was a Lenape site, but to use them as an example, the turtle or unami clan would send some hunters north to the Poconos in fall to bring home dried meat, skins, bones and hooves, just as they would send some people east to the ocean in the summer for salt, shells and other things. None of these activities would have taken place without some reference to the spirits of the places they visited. This is long and I have more to say, so I'll post about it when I post the rest of the pictures from this site.
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