Sunday, February 16, 2020

More and bigger mounds at Sippewissett - biggest mounds on Cape Cod

I took a friend to see a rock pile I located along the trail, and we both wandered off a few feet to see if there might be other things. My friend went over a little ridge and found a pocket with the largest mounds I have seen on the Cape. I walked up the trail a few yards and decided that there was too much bull-briar to penetrate. Either I did not walk far enough or am too short to see what my friend saw when we walked up the trail together: another mound buried deep in the briar. It always tweaks my ego to be bested at my own game. To be fair, I found the place in general. But I did not explore as carefully as I should have. Now I am thinking of taking a clipper into the vines and carving a trail in there in a way that no one will notice.
Several different features inside the blue outline. There is a pocket of mounds there, and perhaps more to be seen nearby - it is pretty impenetrable west of the trail.
Mound site at Sippewissett, sw Beebee Woods

So here we step into the 'pocket' - completely invisible unless you are right there.
 The lower, larger one seems to have a hollow
The upper one seems to be a "duel chambered" model:

Here is a view out the 'pocket' to the south, from behind the lower mound:
My friend, Johannes Raatz, shows the direction to the south, out the valley:
After poking around for a bit, we went back to the trail and he spotted this one in the bushes. My only excuse for missing this is my being about 6 inches shorter. A great "spot" in any case:
Upon braving scratched legs, we can make out that this mound also has a faint hollow:
So this is quite a wonderful collection of mounds for Cape Cod. If you had asked me two years ago I would have said, the only "mounds with hollows" were the oldest smallest form of them (like Scott Reservoir and like the site off Briarwood Rd, in Acton at Nashoba Brook). But I was wrong, I found a pavement and then a normal "rectangular mound with hollow" over by the fire station in Woods Hole. And now, with after seeing these truly typical larger mounds, it is clear that -yes- these are found on Cape Cod too. 

I'll report next on some mounds under the trail nearby at Sippewisset. Which suggests these hills above Sippewissett might have had more mounds in the past. But today it is very heavily developed.

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