By Hy-Crest Pond

Hy-Crest pond is a large, seemingly natural, lake south of the Leominster hills, in northern Sterling. I can tell you there are lots of rock piles in the woods next to the roads that pass this pond, including an old homestead surrounded by rock piles. But I have not found much away from the roads and it is tough going with a combination of mountain laurel and poor -slash and discard- forestry practices. 

But all and all, I think I'll keep the location of this mound to myself. It is pristine. You won't have trouble finding it if you look carefully. I saw this several years ago and thought the mound was only a few inches high - ignoring the obvious fact that it was sitting atop a larger artificial mound. Coming across it again, I took another look and saw that this is pretty much a typical "mound with hollow", except it is not rectangular and the hollow is not obvious.

In the past, I was struck by the sense of a ramp climbing up the side of the pile. 

But I did not realize it was so big. It is kind of rectangular, in that it has a corner:

A magnificent example.
In the past when I looked at this pile, I did not see anything nearby. Isolated piles lack context. But this time I noticed three things nearby. One was a small rock-on-rock, which I did not photo. But I was happily surprised to see something else in the bushes down at the water's edge. Never saw this before because I never came in winter:

Another view:

This is a perfect little smeared crescent - just like the ones in Groton between Horse Hill and Blood Rd. I always thought these were an older form of "mound with hollow". So now the larger mound has some context.
I also noticed that the stone wall had an opening in it, next to the larger mound.

In overview, here is the mound with a wall running straight back from the large rock in the foreground. The lake is to the left.

It is fair to say that this is a lake shore culture.