Saturday, May 24, 2008

Quarried Boulders and few rock piles - East Woods Boylston, MA

Just wanted to finish off surveying this part of the county and got access via an abandoned railroad track at the north end (the diagonal line below the USGS logo) and moseyed southwards. Saw lots of evidence of boulders having been broken up for quarrying purposes. Things like this:
I do not consider them to be rock piles of much interest when they are just examples of scattered debris. But I was having a little trouble dismissing some of them, that looked like a bit of work went into stacking them up:
But I did not see anything very convincing 'till I got down to the last outcrop before wetland. Here was a solitary rock pile, then a rock-on-rock, and then an interesting bit of stone wall following the edge of the outcrop:If you click on the picture, you might be able to see a little "key-hole"/window at the far right. Here it is in detail:I thought this was a little peculiar. The wall more or less ends here but starts again a little further along the outcrop, continues for a few yards and then turns downhill to the right, going down the "cliff" and stopping on its way into the wetter lower land at the edge of this outcrop. Meanwhile, on the southern side of the outcrop, just before the more open water, were the first signs of what I was sure were ceremonial structures. A rock-on-rock and a rock pile:
As I scanned around in the same area, I found another similar pile. The standing stone in the middle is obviously deliberate:Another view:Actually the neatest pile I saw was later after I had worked my way around to the east, looking west back over the same water. Here was a low curved pile.Another view:After that I headed east over the main hill and down to a little isolated pond, and then back north to my car. There might be more to see further south along the wet area but, in the direction I went, I saw little after this - an occasional rock-on-rock in the dappled light. A pleasant place to walk.

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