Thursday, July 26, 2018

ARCHAEOLOGISTS SAY HUMANS MAY HAVE COME TO TEXAS EARLIER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT

[From the Texas Standard, about the Gault site; a picture of  arrowheads from several layers below Clovis:]

“Right now we find no other technology that looks like this assemblage,” Williams says.

[PWAX says: really? You must not get out much. Those are the typical shapes of arrowheads from North Africa. This one is from Niger.]
[By the way, it looks like there are some Clovis precursors over there too. Or maybe they came from the US first?]

Monday, July 23, 2018

Field trip to the Upton Chamber

What:                   Field trip to the Upton Chamber and associated ceremonial stone landscape features atop nearby Pratt Hill

When:                  Saturday August 11 from 1PM to 4PM 
                              or Saturday Sept. 8 from 1-4pm 


Where:                 Meet at the American Legion parking lot at 15 Milford St, Upton, MA 01568
  • From there we will carpool to the Upton Chamber at Heritage Park, and then to the base of Pratt Hill
  • We will park at the base of Pratt Hill and walk to the NITHPT land at the top of the hill to see the stone features there
  • For elders and handicapped we will can transportation you up the hill if given advanced notice

RSVP:                    Please send email to nithpt.csl@gmail.com (we can accommodate up to 20 people)

Planning a couple walks

I am down on the Cape more than usual, so, no good walking [I have already explored around Falmouth, a lot]. I'll be heading north and hoping to get a couple walks in this week, and have something to report.
Update: struck out twice. Got wet.

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Southern Franklin State Forest

I have reported on FSF before, here and here, when I visited the central and northern parts of the park. So on this visit, I went in from the end of Lorraine Metcalf Rd and stayed as far left as possible.
I spent most of the walk slogging - it rained hard the night before and -boy- is there a lot of Sweet Pepper Bush in there! I found some mounds around Magotty Hill but also got tuckered out when trying to return to the car I found myself at the water tower at the high point of the Forge Hill. Luckily I recognized the place and only had to do another mile of slogging to get back to the car.

So I want to say that the first mound, at A, was exactly where I expected to find something. I had taken a trail to the left from Lorraine Metcalf and, after it crossed a brook (you can see a western branch of Mine Brook there) there was another side trail leading off south. Kept south for a few yards until a stone wall crosses the trail and I followed the wall west down towards the wetland, thinking: "now this is the kind of place I expect rock piles". Sure enough, I poked my head into the bushes on the north side of the wall and saw something looming in the distance. I showed a video a couple posts ago. Here are some still photos. First a fuzzy picture from a nearby "satellite" pile towards the larger mound.
Better:


If there was a 'hollow' it was at the far end (more like what I called a "tail" in the past). 
Some other views:

How cool is that?

I continued south by bush and trail and eventually found some very messy things next to a field (at B) which I did not trust. I suspect these were real but added to by field clearing. I'll spare you all but a couple of the photos:



The piece of quartz swayed my opinion.

I continued west along and through some cleared field areas on Magotty Hill, then headed north. The underbrush was heavy and I exited the cleared area at the only spot (at C) where I would have seen this, and I take no credit for finding it - just lucky: 
(from the field view)
 (view back towards the open field)

That one is definitely real. 
After seeing these mounds in the southern part of the forest, I walked through thick wet bushes all the way north and then most of the way back to the car.

Update: I guess a chronological account like this, coming after many of the same ilk, adds little value other than the location of some rock piles - someone living nearby might want to go have a look. But in truth, what is observable at these sites is piles that are built up quite high - meaning they are young, without the type of "hollow" I expect to see in mounds further north. Should I compare these mounds to the ones over in Hassanamesit and Peppercorn Hill? My experience is still too patchy to make these comparisons confidently.

Sunday, July 01, 2018