A white oak:
I pit in an outcrop, a known copper mine in the Spencer Brook Valley of Concord:
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This is about rock piles and stone mound sites in New England. A balance is needed between keeping them secret and making them public. Also arrowheads, stone tools and other surface archaeology.
statcounter
Great trees! Oaks take long to grow, and I think white oaks take longer to get big than red oaks do. We're talking hundreds of years.
ReplyDeleteBoth look as if they once stood in a cleared area and the woods grew up around them. Causes the lower branches to die and drop off. But you probably know all that.
Think what the woods were once like, with chestnuts as big as 6 feet in diameter, and huge old oaks. No wonder the bison could wander through the wood. Not much sun could get through to encourage undergrowth. Huge flocks of passenger pigeons, groups of elk, dens of wolves. It was a different world.
I read recently (in "1491...") that the vast passenger pigeon flocks were a bi-product of some other ecological disaster brought about by the Europeans. There are very few passenger pigeon bones in the campsite debris studied by archeologists, indicating that the large numbers of birds were a recent phenomenon.
ReplyDeleteI wish they would try to bring back the passenger pigeon. They ought to be able to find some decent DNA and use Mourning Doves. Ah well, I'll settle for the Whooly Mammoth.
Weston looks like a fascinating area. Thanks for sharing the photos. That sentinal pile is unusual. The copper mine is also interesting. Is there any evidence that Native people collected copper there?
ReplyDeleteI read that, too. Interesting ideas he has. May or may not be true.
ReplyDelete