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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.
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Just quoting from "1491" by Charles C. Mann (thanks to Tim for the reco on this book), it says "Incredible to imagine today, bison roamed from New York to Georgia. A creature of the prairie, Bison bison was imported to the East by Native Americans along a path of indigenous fire, as they changed enough forest into fallows for it to survive far outside its original range."
ReplyDeleteThat is an impressive rock pile!
I have a strong belief that such a fine pile could not remain un-damaged for long. Meaning if it represents a buffalo, that would be more likely based on seeing pictures of buffalo than seeing actual buffalo.
ReplyDeleteFFC says maybe it is a "Horned Serpent" - something to do with the underworld.
I vote Buffalo. Look up(google)Katonah, the man from the town of the same name; I seem to recall a history relating his 1700's stories about going down to White Plains to hunt Buffalo...
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Katonah
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LSITqICu-8
There is no hump - one of the main distinctive features of a buffalo and quite easy to do in a rock pile. So I remain skeptical of the buffalo identification.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if someone can make sense out of the piece of quartz behind the head. What horned creature has something special on its neck?
I called our local buffalo farm and the person I spoke with said some of their buffalo have distinctive humps, but others do not. I'm still on the fence on this one, but leaning toward buffalo. Another thing to consider is the subspecies of buffalo. Wood or Bison bison athabascae differs from Bison bison bison. I'm not sure if this could account for the difference in the size of the hump.
ReplyDeleteLooking at pictures of bison lying down, the hump seems less prominent, even non-existent in some photos. I wonder if this could be an explanation?
Here is an interesting link that might explain the quartz, if the quartz is meant to emphasize the hump that is not there (wow, that's an enigma):
Buffalo Hump Roast
Changing my vote, all these years later. Not a bison but a "Horned Serpent." Some HS petrogylphs show deer-like horns, but some have bison-like horns - and some have both. Uktena is the Cherokee name associated, but after some email communications with Jannie Loubser, it is probably whatever the Spirit Being was called in the language the builder spoke. The quartz rhomboidal stone could be a scale or even a representation of the "crystal on the Uktena’s head...called ulstĭtlĭ’," literally “it is on its head.” Jannie also says, "...in the hands of the medicine person it becomes ulûñsû’tĭ, or “transparent.” So considered together, the changing names and contexts for Uktena horns (also called ulstitli) and crystals imply that the thoughts on the head of the snake became transparent to the person who possessed it (Personal Communication 7/21/2015)."
ReplyDelete