Friend from Carlisle thinks that many rocks were made into bowls for holding water rather than for grinding corn. So these bowls would not need to be smooth sided but they would need to be at the top of a rock. This idea really makes sense on a day like today after substantial rain fall when you can see how it would work. The bowls become little reflecting pools.Here is another not quite so convincing example, before and after cleaning.
You would not credit this with being a deliberate construction but then it is right next to another:
What would these little puddles look like at night? Here is one more from the same place.
This was very interesting. There are so many subtle things to watch for. Once my son and I were at a site with a group of people, one of whom was a Lenape descendant. His young son attached himself to my son for the day and I think as a result, the father warmed to Jonas and began to show him things. I didn't hear a lot of it, but I was nearby when he was telling Jonas to look up the hill. When we did, he pointed out that a number of seemingly random rock groups created, from that angle only, dark triangular holes. From that low point on the hill, you could see these . . . what? triangular hollows? only several inches wide formed by the angles between the rocks, repeated again and again, even though from any other angle the rock groups appeared completely unrelated and accidental.
ReplyDeleteI hope I have described it well enough to give a sense of what I saw. At the time it seemed wrong to take a picture.
This observation of yours is like that in the sense that it makes me want to kick myself: why didn't I ever look for that before? And who is this friend of yours?
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ReplyDeleteFriend from Carlisle is wise, but we knew that.
ReplyDeleteHere's an example from Wickaboxet, also called Rattlesnake Ledge, in West Greenwich, RI. I believe Rick Lynch led a NEARA field trip to this site last year. I grew up a few miles away and have spent literally hundreds of hours here.
Many artifacts were recovered from this site back in the 1920's when it was excavated. It was described as a, "Narragansett encampment."
(right-click link and use Open in New Window -- it won't let me use a target attribute)
www.menotomyjournal.com/wickaboxet.jpg