Things have conspired to stop me blogging, mainly a dead computer. Anyway, I wanted to mention this site before going on Christmas vacation and entering another blogging "dead zone".Groton is in the category of town that "almost always disappoints", yet my recent experiences in southern NH led me to think it would be worth following a "edge of water" exploration strategy over in one of the rock parts of town. In the past I found a few traces on the walk up to Horse Hill from Rocky Hill Rd, and coming home I was driving slowly looking out the car window:
On my first visit (when I forgot my camera last weekend) I poked into the woods, wondering if there was going to be a bigger "mound with hollow" down at the water's edge. Saw encouraging traces:
And then something bigger loomed in the background:
Closer up, yes there is a sort of hollow:
But this 'mound' is actually more triangular than rectangular. Here is a view of the apex of the triangle:
In the vicinity there were some marker-like piles. Perhaps "ski jumps"?
If I had to say, I would call this one rectangular:
So, what with one thing and another, this is not exactly a typical Wachusett Tradition site. Instead (because there were a variety of piles around, some in better shape than others) it seemed like the whole area had different styles of rock pile mixed together. As if this spot was important and ceremonies continued to be performed here at different times.On the other side of the road there was one more pile in the "cluster". This one is also a bit rectangular, with some symmetry about the larger rock (which looks fire-cracked).
I continued to explore on this other side of the road and found a few other clusters of piles in there. So the whole area has quite a few minor sites in addition to the larger 'mound'. Much more than I would expect from Groton and certainly worth exploring some more in the future.And just for reference, I frequently find something like a buried stone wall at these "Wachusett Tradition" sites. Something even older and more beaten down than the rest. There was one of those here as well.
This was the first puncturing of the bubble that was hiding all the sites at Horse Hill. After this, I found the whole region to be full of sites.
ReplyDelete"the whole region" means, in particular, the valley north of the blue outline. There are hundreds of things in there.
ReplyDelete