Saturday, August 09, 2014

Franklin Town Forest

There is a marked entrance on Summer Str. I wanted to get over to that "Uncas" pond but was blocked by a private camp entrance. So I went in on Summer Str.
Going straight back and downhill to the east, you see rock piles immediately:



After looking at a few, I decided they were evenly spaced, what I call a "marker pile site" and, although old, retained a faint sense of having once been rectangular:

I have come to associate marker pile sites with chambered mounds ("large piles with hollows") so I was on the lookout around the edges but I did not see anything.
In one part the piles seemed more debris covered and broken down - which I think of as an indication of age but it could be differential "weathering":


So I walked around and down hill and found more piles, deeper and deeper in the bushes, on the way down the slope.
Going back uphill and a bit further north, things got a big bigger and messier:
Then I did see something big in the distance:
That is a pretty large pile of rocks and I wanted to think it was a "mound" and not just a discard pile at the bottom of a field. Looking it over...what have we here?

With or without the tire, here are two collapsed chambers - the "hollows" I was hoping to see. So I end up believing this is a substantial burial mound. Here are some other views:

After that I walked around more, went back to my car and snuck into the woods near the camp entrance. I found a few more piles over there doing a quick survey. The whole area is probably full of sites.

2 comments :

Anonymous said...

Very interesting about the collapsed chamber input. I have often wondered this myself when looking at some sites (although I figured this was in the realm of me "speculating.") Sometimes I am scratching my head in awe and wonderment with how much some of these sites seem to be collapsed/ destroyed, especially when I see some rocks laid out in an intelligent/ symmetrical pattern, and right next to it is a whole bunch of stuff chaotically strewn about. Anyway, awesome work!!
-Matt H.

Anonymous said...

Those stone piles are Native America cairns which are erected in memory of a special event,such as a victory over an enemy, the death of a family member and for other special events. The singular cairns here are flatter and spread out over a larger area; other cairns produced by the American Indians are taller and start with larger stones on the bottom and work its way up to the top with smaller stones.
-Donald B.