McGregor Ln - Sherborne MA

You may have just been looking at this map, in the report on Paul Hill.
I mentioned I wanted to get over into that swamp/valley downhill from the road, and I figured out how to do it because there is a small conservation land off one of the small roads there ("McGregor Lane") and I went trespassing in behind there, getting access to a big undisturbed woods. We see scenes like this:
Regular nicely made walls, not necessarily at right angles or all that straight, criss-cross the area and I found a reasonably high density of rock pile sites as I poked around in there. There are more sites than shown on the map. Got a bit lost up near where the "?" appears but retraced my steps successfully and got out of there.

I am afraid the "teaser" (here) may have made this look more interesting than it deserves. The sites I found were like this: a small cluster of piles built on small boulders, hiding in the Hay-Scented ferns.
Some of the piles seemed slightly triangular:
Some of them were unmistakably triangular:[Make note, I took photos of others like this from Concord, yesterday]

Another cluster. Same idea but with Cinnamon Ferns rather than Hay-Scented ones.
These above were on the east side of "Bare Hill". Stepping across onto the "island" in the middle of the swamp: another few clusters. Here is one:
A split rock with some fill:The piles in this cluster are a bit larger and more substantial:Piles with vertical sides, split-wedge rocks, familiar features. It went on and on: walk through ferns, get lost, find more rock piles. Here was a nice one:
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Eventually (about where the "?" appears") there was something else. A messy spill over the edge of what could easily have been a plowed area. So field clearing piles?Maybe, but this was adjacent to the Paul Hill sites I reported [click here], with the same objections to this being field clearing. Just wanted to mention this other type of site in there.

So I got lost because it was cloudy and I followed the wrong hill to get back to where I thought I came in. Now I'm packing a compass on cloudy days. It is very liberating.

Yellow Iris

[Not rock pile related] This is one of the more spectacular native flowers:
It's really pretty isn't it?This is from the Cambridge Turnpike in Concord, MA right next to the nursery.

Paul Hill - Sherborne MA (Part 2 )

[See part I here] Getting back to the report, there were a few larger rock piles along the road a few yards east of the first ones, also on the south side of the road. Something like these.These could be field clearing piles, messy as they are and right next to the road. But I don't want to see a corner or a retaining wall on a field clearing pile:
Nor do I want to see a few rocks on top of a boulder, as a field clearing pile:Nor do I want to see other rectangular piles nearby with rock sizes selected to be roughly uniform, or layed down like a pavement rather than a smeared angle-of-repose pile:
Nor do I want to discover that these piles are localized to within a single 1/2 acre [I have now explored nearby reasonably carefully and there was one more expression of this type of pile, which I will describe when I get around to explaining the previous "Teaser"]
So, all in all, these actually do not work as field clearing piles. I was looking for hollows.

Coastal Discoveries.com

Reader Lee (from www.coastaldiscoveries.org) writes:
I found a Neville Point spearhead dart along the Merrimack River in Newburyport this spring...
"...I found the dart during that "super tide" that we had in March. I think it was around March 20th. The Merrimack River had been dredged last summer and there are many new sandbars in the area and some of the older sandbars have disappeared. I wouldn't be surprised if the dart was unearthed during the dredging and with the very low tide on the 20th, it ended up on the beach right at the tide line."

Note: After some email exchanges, Curtiss Hoffman suggests this may be a "Mansion Inn" point from the transitional archaic.

Non-Spanish Turtles at Rock Piles

Turtle Rock ???Posted Oct 21, 2008, 07:44:58 AM by WV HillBilly

I know nothing about treasure markers & signs except what I see on here , however I have found a fairly large rock that is turtle shaped . What are the odds that a turtle rock ( other than a natural one ) would be found in the mountains of WV ?
Reply To This Topic #1 Posted Oct 21, 2008, 12:10:53 PM

Well, if you search the internet for neara or i think rockpiles or indian rock piles...you might conclude the chancess are pretty good. Doesn't mean it is spanish though. - desertmoons
Found at http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,188815.0.html

Mongolian Stone Turtles

Along with some rock piles and more...

Click here: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2011/06/mongolian-stone-turtles.html

A Dunstable Machu Pichu

Just kidding:

Teaser

From last weekend (lots more stuff to come):

Rock piles in Georgia

Based on visitor logs there must be a lot of rock piles in Georgia - this blog gets more visitors from there than anywhere else south of PA. So how about somebody from Georgia starts blogging rock piles?

Roadside Attractions - Bush Hill Rd, Pelham NH

Driving somewhere on Bush Hill Rd (I think near the blue outline above) I noticed what looked like a very fine "cairn" down in the woods below the road. On closer inspection it was a modest pile built up on a vertical-sided boulder.I parked and got out to take a few pictures. There were two other similar piles more or less the same distance as the first from the road:
andThe whole area was on a sort of plateau, or shelf, on the steeper hillside below the road. The shelf was enclosed by stone walls. Here is a view back towards the road.
The first and second pile are center and right. The third pile is to the upper left.

Off to one side, was a big and very messy pile of smaller rocks, that might have been a viewing platform, or a field clearing pile - except there was no nearby field and other field clearing characteristics were missing. Sorry for the poor focus, take a close look at this picture. Among other things you see a cascade of rocks spilling over the edge of the shelf. At the left edge of the picture, midway between top and bottom, is a darker shadow, which is a crevice in the bedrock. The smaller rocks in the cascade seemed to have been pulled out from the overall pile and seemed to have been tossed to the side around this crevice; as if someone had removed the smaller rocks from there. Why would someone dig down into the pile this way?

Let me comment that this site is quite like the one from Sherbourne from last week: it consists of a few large vertical sided piles, somewhat in a line, on a level spot, enclosed by a wall. I believe these are one kind of marker pile site.

Let's have a last look at the first and second piles:Update: In comments, Larry asks if the second pile has a manitou stone on it. Here is better look at the 2nd pile with the large rock on the right:

Obnoxius cairn building

A scientific study [click here]

Paul Hill Part 1 - Sherborn, MA

Geez I am getting senile! I couldn't remember where I walked last Sunday. Another weekend, another rock pile site. But I reconstituted the visit as follows: I went out to explore a valley southwest of Brush Hill, with the backup plan of going up and around the hill. I drove over there and could not figure out where I was on the map (I think Green Lane is mislabeled) and could not figure out how to park. Took a short stroll on the Brush Hill side of the road and quit after thinking it was more of the same from the last time I went there (see here) and, while driving back and forth trying to find a trail head, I noticed some rock piles on the south side of the road at what I now see is Paul Hill. We'll look at this in a second. There are rock piles all over on Brush Hill so, together with these new ones on Paul Hill, maybe the next time I want to drive down that way, I should check Peters Hill. Come to look again at the larger map (not shown above) I really do want to get down into that valley. I'll have to approach from a different direction but it is a maze of small roads. On one stretch of road, I think on Green Lane, there is a hill or bluff to the south with several rock piles along the edge of the bluff, visible from the road. Here is one:Here is another. Note the quartz:Closer:Both piles are built on a boulder and have a bit of a small hollow or niche at their center that seems slightly non-random.

A smaller pile and a couple of other things on the level top of the bluff: Something rather special about this site were two wall bulges. Here is the first one: It looks a bit as if someone dumped rocks over the wall. But if that was so, more of them would have ended up on the ground around the outcrop. One more view shows a second wall bulge in the background:Here is a closer view of the second. I think these are rather unusual.

Luna Moth

[Not rock pile related]Third one of these I have seen in my life. Glad they are still around. Photo taken by a colleague at work in Wilmington, MA

The Rather Testudinate “Indian Rock” in Bristol CT

One might well wonder if perhaps there's been some shaping of this boulder, especially to the right side of it, in order to make it appear more turtle-like:

Image from http://www.elcct.org/Photo02/photo_gallery.htm

INDIAN ROCK NATURE PRESERVE

501 Wolcott Road, Bristol, CT 06010

More at:  http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2011/06/rather-testudinate-indian-rock-in.html, including a bit of a 1907 History of Bristol that includes this image of "Indian Rock or House Rock."

Also seen on the way to Church Rock

Down in those same woods, a gap pile:
Note the second pile downhill, somewhat hidden by the ferns.

Closeup of the larger pile:Closer:View of the smaller pile:And a pink azalea for dessert:The woods are beautiful but buggy and I am still weak from the long winter. Here we are not far from the road but deep in the ferns:

Back to Church Rock

I wrote about this pile before [click here]. It is in the area just north of Mt Wachusett in the woods adjacent to a place labeled "Church Rock" on the topo map. I always thought this was an evocative name but, in the end, I think it is a cliff and not a boulder. Anyway it is hard going in there, with lots of downed trees under foot, so I am still not sure I got to the named rock. There was a familiar pile on the way.
I thought it interesting that this pile has no hollow and no appearance of rectangularity. It is a domed oval. It just does not look like a field clearing pile with its uniform sized component rocks and its height.Note the curve of the pile, visible from this last view of the pile.

Looking back...come on, that's ceremonial.