Yes indeed rock piles like this could have been made as bi-products of field clearing. All the different sizes of rocks which would occur in a field, also occur here in the pile. The thing that is confusing is when there are "companion" rock piles nearby which fail to convey any sense of being practical and related to field clearing.
Here is another:
And nearby:
One more, falling apart into the ferns:
I may have mentioned my belief that some of the farmers were probably Indians. The Patch Family are said to have been religious dissenters from England. Perhaps they accepted or even practiced some Indian ceremonies. Otherwise it is hard to see what might be going on here? What was the chronology of pile building events? Patch Hill in Boxborough is the prime example of this ambiguity.
Compare the diagonal courses of rock in the retaining walls to the style in the Lancaster piles of the previous post.
ReplyDeleteI think the theory that these stone piles or cairns represent historic ceremonial activity by Native Peoples who took up farming is sound. In many cases, as shown by this site, there is supporting evidence in terms of the presence of other stone structures generally interpreted as Native American in origin. The size of the stone in the pile or cairn must be examined on a case by case basis. Some of these cairns exhibit uniformity of stone size, other exhibit a mix of sizes, and I have seen one example in Sandborton, NH where the stones were sorted by size within the cairn (the cairn was filled with three distinct sections each with its own size of stone). These cairns or piles built into the corners of stone walls generally occur in isolated pockets throughout New England. There is small area with a concentration of these features then miles of surrounding area totally devoided of them.
ReplyDeleteThere are some ligitimate field clearing examples of these piles, but, they are quite rare. They are distinguished by a lack of stone wall cutting diagonally across the corner between the stone walls, stone scatter along the edges, poor construction, and many times small mounds which are either result of being dumped from a wagon or cart.
As for the Miner Farm, the latest posted photos show a well like feature built into the cairn. Careful examination of the photos reveals that the well feature is an integral and original feature of this cairn. This feature is the equivalent to the intentional depression features found in some cairns. The best available information currently suggests that such features operated as spirits portals, or, places to make offerings to the spirits, or a combination of the two. The ability of native Americans to built round well structures is attested to by the two wells at America's Stonehenge (Mystery Hill), and the design of the Mineral Road Chamber (Shutesbury, MA). There is a second well-like chamber in Shutesbury which I will be posting more details on shortly at stonestructures.org.
James Gage
www.StoneStructures.org
James wrote "This feature is the equivalent to the intentional depression". You kind of lost me on that one.
ReplyDeleteMyself, Bruce McAleer, and others have found large cairns with bowl like depressions (or craters for a lack of a better term) in them. These features were initially thought to be the result of vandalism. However, some of these bowl like depressions exhibit careful effort to create them. These features appeared to be intentionally constructed by the persons building the cairn not the result of vandalism.
ReplyDeleteJames Gage
www.stonestructures.org
I was asking, why you consider the hole in the Miner Farm pile to be equivalent to such a deliberate depression.
ReplyDelete