"the Indians who inhabited this region during the early part of the present century buried their dead in stone coffins.” (Jones. Antiq. So. Indians, p.220)."

Was reminded by this.

Inquiry about rock piles from Erie PA

Reader Lisa, asking if any knowledgeable person lives nearby who could take a look, writes:
"...  I live in Erie, Pennsylvania...and we were recently beginning the process of cutting some trails through the woods, which have been untouched pretty much forever, I believe. We found some rock piles, like the ones I see online that mention indians. There are about 4 on our property and I can see at least 2 or 3 in the neighboring woods. They look very very old. They are situated behind what we think was an apple orchard at one time but is now completely overgrown.

I wondered how to tell if it is an actual indian 'rock pile'. Also, what sort of pile it is. ...Are we in an area where it may be possible? I am curious about them.

Thanks for any help! 

[Sending photos]

"...I have attached photos of three of the piles that are plainly visible. Pile 2 has been disassembled somewhat :( before I realized there may be more to these things. There are at least two or three more piles back there and several places where VERY large boulders seem to be somewhat....placed?..."

Popular opinion about rock piles - surfing the web

It should bother me to read what I think is nonsense coming from these folks who farmed and call themselves experts on rock piles. It should also bother me that they've probably never been in more than a few dozen acres of woodland. Except - it is better to just ignore them. Right?

But then there is this (watch the video). I think Roger Wise is being wise.

Photos from Goddess

Reader Steve writes:
attached you will find a great example of a stone pile showing the female form.  it is oriented in a n/s alignment on top of a ridge near the center of mt. desert island in maine.  we have observed it for the past 25 years along side of a path we have taken on daily walks through the woods not ten minutes from our door.  they are photos taken from several angles and show a foot long ruler as well as a compass.  we have left it undisturbed and it is on property subject to development in the future. 

 

 

 

 

Update: "a couple of things struck me that i had not mentioned before.  there is a stream downhill from the stone pile.  it is to the west and flows into a large bog.  also you can see in couple of the photos a round stone that could be the head that i believe over time has been pushed a couple of feet away by frost heave or perhaps the action of roots.  the lap of the figure, the largest stone, has a depression in it much like the corn grinding stones."

More dogs on rock piles

At Clark'sGully. Did we see these examples?

Mound on Holston River, Sullivan County, Tennessee

I'm not sure if this work has appeared here before; I found this an interesting drawing:

 (Fig. 37.—Mound on Holston River, Sullivan County, Tennessee) 

"Mound No. 2 was on the south side of the river, opposite No. 1 and about the same distance from the river. It was 38 feet in diameter and 5 feet high, and on the top was a pine stump 14 inches in diameter.

Mr. Emmert, in opening it, commenced at the edge to cut a ditch 4 feet wide through it, but soon reached a wall 3 feet high, built of "river rock." He then worked around this, finding it to be an almost perfect circle, 14 feet in diameter, inside of which were found, on throwing out[Pg 76] the dirt, twelve stone graves or vaults, built of the same kind of stones, each containing a sitting skeleton, as shown in Fig. 37. One of these graves or vaults was exactly in the center, the other eleven being placed in a circle around it, and about equally spaced, as shown in the diagram.

In the center grave he found shell beads around the neck of the skeleton, and near the mouth the pipe shown in Fig. 38.

The bottom of the area within the circular wall was covered to the depth of about 3 inches with charcoal, and the graves were built on this layer. Both of these mounds were on the bench or upper bottom, and about three-fourths of a mile from the river.

Mr. Emmert says he learned that there was a tradition of the neighborhood that the Indians once fought a great battle at this place, and that one party buried some of their dead in mound No. 2, and the other party buried their dead on the opposite side of the river, where there is a large pile or mound of "river rock..."

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41557/41557-h/41557-h.htm#Page_55

Near Sippewisset

At the end of Terhuen Dr in Falmouth, there is a path into the woods. You step on a couple of smeared out rock piles (a) and then have a choice between a short easy walk on the path or heading into the bullbriar. Last weekend I went south along the side of the gully to (b) where I noticed an isolated rock pile and a low, very decrepit, stone wall. It runs south along the side of the valley, then turns, crosses a knoll where it forms more of a mound, then terminates at a large boulder. I did not have my camera as I did not expect to find anything on that walk. I went back this weekend for a more thorough look. I see now that the land form is a southern piece of Swift's Hill, one of the tallest hills in the town. 
In fact this hill has rock piles all over it if you look carefully. At (c) there were ~3 piles.

At (d) I stumbled back into a site where I have been before. Seems as though I always end up here in the same place. Lost in the woods, I am able to locate myself because I recognize a rock pile. The place is well hidden otherwise.

Then I extricated myself. [These accounts are sprinkled with references to the difficulty of walking in here. My legs are all scratched up with bullbriar scratches and I dare say, not too many people go off trail in this part of town.]. 
Taking the straight line from the hilltop back towards (a) I found myself stepping on other rock piles again at (e). So they are well hidden, and difficult to get to but this hill has plenty of rock pile clusters. My understanding is that the higher norther part of Swift's Hill is private property. A landowner there asked me to come look at the stone structures on his property, so there is that still to do.

Recognize the Boulder?

This is the cover art for the album American Stonehenge by the artist Robin Williamson. The cover art copyright is believed to belong to the record label or the graphic artist(s).

American Stonehenge is a folk album released in 1978 by Robin Williamson and his Merry Band. This album was produced by Robin Williamson and engineered by Dirk Dalton at Dirk Dalton Recording, Santa Monica, California, in December 1977. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Stonehenge_(album)

Quartz pile- like a snake, somewhere down south

Worth watching.[click here]

What's this?

From an anonymous reader:

A dry stretch

     I haven't been finding many Indian artifacts lately. The summer is tough, it's hot and humid, the sun beats down and burns my skin. There's vegetation everywhere, and loads of bugs. I don't know how the Indians dealt with it. Deer flies are the worst. There may be some rare instances where you can shoo them away but most of the time a deer fly that has locked on to you as a target will not leave before you kill it or it feeds. If you are lucky you might be able to swat it right away but most of the time you find yourself just slapping your head and neck over and over for minutes. The rush of triumph when you finally get the fly can be greater than the thrill of a find, even when the finds are relatively few and far between.
     It's been really dry recently. It rained hard today but last week, not a drop. The lack of rain means nothing new is popping up in my favorite places to look for stuff. I am forced to look instead in less productive places. If I find an arrowhead in a place I know there are more to find and I will return again and again. Sometimes I will spend many hours in a place over a period of months or years and not find anything but you never know when you might make an amazing find in an unexpected place. I have been looking for arrowheads with my friend Dave, especially in large unproductive places it helps to have two people to cover the ground and being able to chat with someone alleviates the boredom of walking miles without finding anything. I keep track of where we find stuff and it helps me to understand where the best spots are, and where there might be big areas that are void. We went to a large place where I haven't found very much, despite spending a lot of time there. I found a small, crude quartz stemmed point. Dave found a larger, better quartz stemmed point missing the tip and also an amazing artifact, half of an atl-atl counterweight. He had no idea what it was when he handed me this strange grooved rock. This is what collectors might call a ball bannerstone. These are really rare and almost always broken, the freeze/thaw cycle breaks them over time. I hope the other half is still out there and that I might find it some day. I'm not sure I will be taking Dave back to this place.

     In a different place I found this neat artifact, perhaps a scraper or some other tool worked down until it could not be worked any further and discarded. I'm not sure what the material is, something exotic. They really prized material like this and you can tell that this thing was heavily resharpened. I found a quartz projectile point tip nearby.

     There is a place I drive by often that was one of the first places I ever searched for artifacts. I spent a lot of time there, whole days, but never found any trace of prehistoric man. As I got better, learned more about what to look for and how to read early history on the surface of the earth, I kept returning to this spot at odd intervals but I never found even a flake or chip of toolmaking stone. Dave would often ask about it and encourage me to go back there. It's on a stream, the ground is really dry and sandy, it looks so perfect for Indians. I have found arrowheads at other places along that same stream, why would they avoid this spot? Earlier this month Dave brought it up again. I figured it would be best for him to see this place for himself to see just how void this place is, so we went to check it out. I had been walking for less than three minutes when I spotted this. I was astounded. The tip is perfect.

      Dave found this nearby. It would be hard to find a better example in this shape and material. Flawless.

 

     We also each found a larger piece of a material I can't readily identify, showing obvious flaking but not really looking like tools. Perhaps these were just blanks, preforms that might have been stockpiled for future use. We scoured the rest of the area, I did find a grand total of three small quartz flakes. Perhaps these projectile points were lost while hunting, perhaps this was a small camp occupied only for a short time? These two quartz points are to me really typical for southeastern Massachusetts. I will return to this place every year but wouldn't be surprised if I never found anything else there.

      Here is the last of my summer finds so far. The quartz pieces at left and center are from Rhode Island on Saturday, there is the base of a stemmed point and a really crude point that looks like what is called a Rossville- but it's really rough, maybe a reject that was discarded. It was so hot there that the ground was baked into an asphalt-like crust and every chip had to be pried out of the dirt. The felsite tip on the right was all I found in some hours of incredibly uncomfortable searching today in the pouring rain after work. I got bitten by a tick, too. It's really thin and shows nice flaking, it's a fragment of what must have been something really nice. Not worth getting soaked and the tick bite, though. And in the rain you can't feel the deer flies until they bite!

 

Saudi Arabian arrowheads

So rare to see pictures of arrowheads, especially from outside the US [click here] from "Past Horizons"

Ruining DG's Photo

I'm guilty (again):

Details of the crime: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2013/07/ruining-more-perfectly-good-photos.html

Re: "Rock Piles and Stone Structures"

Reader DG writes (commenting on this blog post):
I think part of the difficulty in comparing petroforms in the eastern US with those in Europe (particularly the subarctic regions) is that it is often difficult to visually judge their antiquity, especially in colder places where lichens and mosses grow relatively slowly. Here is a recent picture I took of a prehistoric cairn at an extensive assemblage in Pickens Co., Georgia:

Here are some images I took recently on Hardangervidda in western Norway:

While some of these cairns may be centuries old, others may have been set up by a happy hiker last Tuesday -- even under close inspection, it's hard to tell the difference. While I was initially miffed that people had been "vandalizing" these sites, I realize now that in some ways it represents a "living tradition." They remind me of the continued use of inuksuit in northern Canada -- initially started by the aboriginal peoples (and maybe representing a circumpolar tradition) and extended by modern hikers as a common custom. Here's another one on the Geilmyrren above Vanvikan in Nord-Trøndelag, Norway, almost certainly recent:

While I would agree that the majority of the rock piles and other structures we look at in the eastern US are pre-European, they do exist in Europe, though they differ in materials, environment, and usage. In both places, we can accept that they are not strictly pre-modern. As I mentioned though, I wonder if some of the truly prehistoric ones may represent a circumpolar native tradition, with roots in the earliest migrations,  worth examining.

Here's some other stuff, maybe of interest:

There were reindeer wandering around here, in the Døvrefell:

and some older ones, about 6500 BP, in petroglyphs (in Norwegian, halleristninger) near Stjørdal:

Petroglyphs at Bardal (near Steinkjer, Norway). This site (6000 - 3500 BP) is very cool, and probably represents a transition from stone-age to bronze-age customs:

Helgeshaugen, a standing stone and burial mound (c. 600 AD), also near Steinkjer. Part of a much larger assemblage :

Stone Pile in California

Curtis Hoffman writes:

I’ve been reading Richard Burrill’s “Ishi’s Untold Story in His First World”.  This is an extraordinarily meticulous and detailed account of the famous Yahi Indian who spent his last years as a museum display in San Francisco.  It contains an account by Bryan Beavers, a member of the Konkow band of the Maidu tribe, concerning the persons Burrill thinks are likely Ishi’s mother and father.  The mother was captured as a girl during a Yahi raid, and when she came of age was married to a Yahi man.  The account, from an unpublished Masters thesis by John Duncan III, “How to Catch a Sleeping Fish”, reads as follows:

“And she told this man she was married to, ‘I been with your people long time’ and she said ‘I’d like to go back to my people for a while.’

“And so evidently he was a pretty good one, ‘cause he told her, he said, ‘All right, you been my people for a long time.  I’ll go back and be your people.’  So they came through near Butte Meadows and above Stirling City, and come through walkin’.  And come up here to Dogwood.  That big camp there.

“But they come there, and there were lots of Indians then, you know, oh, lots of ‘em.  Soon as he got there, why he told ’em, he said, ‘I want to be your people.’

“And they said, ‘No. You gotta go back. She’s gonna stay but you gotta go back.’

“He didn’t want to , but they took him.  They took him up on top of the hill there, pretty near the top of that hill on the old Indian trail.  And there’s a big flat rock that only projects up out ‘a the ground a foot and a half or so and it’s flat on top.  And quite big.  They laid him on there and they took rocks and pounded his fingers and his toes and just kept poundin him like that until they killed him.  Mashed him.  Broke his arms.  Until they mashed him.  And they throwed him down the hill and they throwed some rocks on him, you know.

“Until everybody that came along by that place on the trail would always pick up a rock and throw it on there.

“And someday I’m going to go back over there and see if I can find that place and see if the skeleton is in there.  Something in there, see.  I know everybody throw a rock on there until late years.  He’s by the trail, but I don’t know if I can find the trail anymore.  It’s all grown over, you see.”

Really Great Photos- "Peopling the Americas"

Some really good images: http://kennethgarrett.photoshelter.com/gallery/Peopling-of-the-Americas/G0000Na.rE3HYyy4/1/C0000jZl53lHCtDs

Photo above from: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photographers/photographer-kenneth-garrett/

"Garrett's work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, and in Egypt, Cuba, and Japan. It has also been published in Smithsonian, Air and Space, Archaeology,Fortune, Forbes, Time, Life, Audubon, GEO, National Wildlife, and Natural History. His corporate clients include IBM, the Marriott Corporation, UNC Aviation, and Starbucks Coffee. Garrett lives in Broad Run, Virginia, with his wife, Lucie, and their daughters, Kate and Julie."

"Fire Pit" from Northfield

Reader Mike Leonard writes:
As a forester in my own business, I run across quite a few interesting stone monuments.



Update: Dennis Dee writes:

The picture shown is similar to one I found in Woodstock CT. except mine is caved in. The location is near the old Hatchet Pond Reservation.

"Rock Piles And Stone Structures" from InfoBarrel

Click here. I'll comment, in comments.

Just to be going on

Saving the land, preserving the cairns

From the Woodstock Times (via the NEARA bulletin board): click here