Quisset Wildlife Management Area - Mendon MA

Round Meadow Brook is a principal tributary of the Mill River, which joins the Blackstone River in Woonsocket. The brook's headwaters form a pleasant little valley that you drive into from the north. There is a good sized conservation land there, full of rock piles, and I have barely scratched the surface. At the beginning, driving in and passing Quisset Hill, I feel there are rock piles to my left, then I see them behind houses:

It is a natural location: the brow of a hill, looking west out over a wet valley.

Continuing to the dead end, I parked, and from the parking area went downstream (blue outline 'A'). I saw a few rock piles here and there, and nice stone walls, as shown previously. Here we look west across the brook to a small niche, and beyond a pile on a boulder:

Closer: 

I continue across and west up the hill (Inman Hill) and somewhere around blue outline 'B' there was another distinct site.

You see rock piles like the above, receding in a line to the right in the next picture. There are also piles along the edges of those bumps on the left.

Here we look back at those bumps, from another pile in the 'line'.

 The actual "bump":

Another pile, with better view of nearby walls. The walls are like the earlier ones but not as heavy.

Seeing vertical sided piles in many places, I was thinking these sites are calendrical ("marker" pile) sites. In most cases, within outline 'A', I did not see any lines or spacings that I associated with vertical sided piles. Now, part way up the hill, it did seem more like a typical "marker" pile site.

I did not get any higher on the hill and was worried about getting lost, so I swung around to my left and downhill, hitting the dirt road (dotted line on the map) and heading east back towards the entrance. There were larger mounds at 'C', which I will post about later. 

For now, let me comment that this "Meadow" is just one of dozens of similar topographies in the areas between hills like Quisset, Inman, Daniels, and Chestnut. Dozens of opportunities for exploration. If you live near, you should take advantage of what must be some pretty nice woods in there.

More Woods Hole outings

With respect to:
Day 1 - Locust hole
Day 2 - Fringes of Webster woods
Day 3 - NE of Thomas Landers
Day 4 - west of Punch Bowl
Day 5 - Bourne Cons lands
Day 6 - WHOI Quisset

Day 2 - Fringes of Webster Woods
A little prayer seat:Found some more of the typical low degenerate ground piles. Also saw this curiousity:
I do not see any signs of fire use [like the "orb"?] so what is this? People camp in these woods, sometimes for extended periods - it being the Cape and all.

Day 3 - NE of Thomas Landers
Some nice colored mushrooms:A beautiful, simple, rock-on-rock:

Day 4 - west of Punch Bowl
A couple of rock piles in the trail,just past the end of Terhuen Dr.
These play well into the narrative of archeology hidden in suburbia. They must have been good sized piles originally.

Then uphill from there, a couple of very subtle structures. Like this mini gap-pile:
And other low degenerate piles:See the shiny bull-briar leaves? Walked through miles of the stuff this summer - getting used to lifting my feet and, later, to the sting of salt water on the many scratches.

[Saw nothing in Bourne]

Day 6 - WHOI Quisset
A couple of possibly recent structures in the woods by the drive into the Quisset Campus. Bad lighting:And nearby, a funny structure with a standing stone (or "backrest", or "headstone")
There was blue writing and a blue heart on the standing stone. So what is this? Also, right along one of the Quissett Campus trails, is the finest split-wedged rock example I have seen down on the Cape. Split-wedged rocks are rare down here, in general - I used to think they did not exist.

Mound site 'C' at Quisset Wildlife Management Area

There is a collection of mounds at site 'C', shown on the map here:

http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2019/02/quisset-wildlife-management-area-mendon.html

This site is on a flat topped promontory, looking north over a wetland. I was passing by on a dirt road and, happened to see one mound, some distance away through the bushes. If there had been foliage or my head had been turned in the wrong direction, I would have missed the place. As it is, it is a well-preserved and self-contained site consisting of three or four good-sized mounds. A few were rectangular with identifiable "hollows". Others were more polyhedral in outline, with signs of internal walls and other structure - less distinct than a simple hollow. The site is not too different from the sites around College Rock and Rocky Woods in northeastern Milford (one town to the north) and also not too different from the Wrentham sites discussed recently here.

Around each mound were boulders and smaller rock piles with vertical sides. I got the impression that every single rock at this site was ceremonial and that nothing was random. I think this is a very worthwhile site to study - it is pure and undisturbed, and an easy ten minute walk from the parking.

I can describe the place chronologically, as I explored it. Or I can describe it in overview. What affected me the most, however, was one small detail involving split-filled rocks. Due to an error, of seeing the same detail in more than one photo and mistaking them for different examples, caused me to think harder about what possible meaning can there be to a split-filled rock next to a burial mound? Let's start with the mound that was next to a split filled rock:

We note the large boulder in front, a common feature of the mounds at this site. But note the split-filled rock in the background to the left. In more detail:

I wondered, more explicitly than usual: what is the significance of such a split rock at a burial site? How could this be involved in the ceremony and what would be the sequence of events? It is a simple structure and there are not too many possibilities. One possibility gives me a bit of a chill: they split the rock before the ceremony and filled it back up afterwards. It is hypothesized that split rocks are a doorway to the underworld. They may (or should) involve the spirit of the rock but, here, they may involve the spirit of the departed as well. It looks like a door was opened at the beginning of the burial and closed at the end of it. Could the split be an escape route for the soul? I am going to look for this feature near other mounds, in the future. So that is my main takeaway from this site.

Let's have a look at the main mounds, in chronological order of discovery. I will show details after. First we have the "main" mound I saw from the path:

Mound 1

(Note the boulder)

Mound 2 (shown above, near split filled rock)

Mound 3

Notes:
Mound 1: Several smaller piles nearby.

Smaller piles, behind:

Again, note the boulder next to one of them. Some other views of mound 1:

Mound 2: We already saw the adjacent split filled rock. Here is a view back towards this mound, from one of the smaller "satellite" piles:

Some of the "satellite" piles were vertical sided. Others seemed to be more horizontal, with a hint of structure:

Finally, Mound 3:

This seems double chambered with a bit of a tail. Distinctly rectangular. Here is a satellite:

A pretty exciting acre or so, in the woods.

Revisiting Quisset Wildlife Management Area in Mendon

The lower blue outline shows where I found a site previously (see here). Other places with rock piles were shown in the report but the major site was at that lower outline. Last Monday I went back with the plan to explore further to the north. So I ended up skirting the wetland clockwise and came across another major site, at the upper blue outline. Because of its relation to the nearby trail this new site is easy to find: from the trailhead at the end of Quisset Hill Rd., take the main trail and go right at the first fork, a few feet in. Follow this trail to the north, with a wetland to your right, and after about 1/2 mile the trail turns left and crosses a brook. Then uphill to a slight dip, as a higher water source drains away to your right (north) back into the main wetland. Follow that lesser, second valley north and you get there. The new site is placed similarly to the old site and skirting the wetland seems to have been a good strategy in this area. I would have found the old site that way and there are other spots with similar topography further north that may contain other similar sites. I'll have to go back. In any case, these sites are located on low ridges that penetrate the wetland.

I want to describe this new site in a bit of detail because it is a very classic mound-with-hollow, to one side of a collection of smaller satellite piles forming a grid - "marker piles". But here the satellite piles had a somewhat unique character: they were square, some having a larger "headstone". Here was the best photo:

The site was arranged like this:

The dots at 'a' and 'b' show mound and satellites. At 'c' there was a split wedged rock with its feet in the water (except it was dry) and at 'd' were a smaller pile and a twin rock-on-rock. 

At 'c':

 At 'd', higher up, above the mound:

Now let's see some more pictures of the "square" marker piles:

Mendon is in the Blackstone River watershed. The comment was made already that things are a bit different from the Nashua watershed. Square marker piles are rare to non-existent further north although I have described similar "boxes" in a variety of places - like Kezar Hill in northern Shirley.

Here are some views of the larger mound:

It is a rectangle with a dramatic piece of quartz at one corner (this corner faces towards the brook that starts below the split-wedged rock).

 Closer:

Covered with growth, it is a bit hard to make out that this is a rectangle with several hollows:

From above:

Panorama:

At first I thought I had stumbled back into the first site I found (lower outline above) but after walking around a while I realized this was a new place with its own special characteristics. All in all a beautiful and undisturbed site with many of the usual elements arranged in a unique way.

Miscellaneous outings around Woods Hole, MA- Day 1 scouting for rock piles

Looking at the trail maps available from the town of Falmouth (where I have already explored for several years) these seemed like reasonable prospects in the 'edge' areas.

Day 1 - Locust hole
Day 2 - Fringes of Webster woods
Day 3 - NE of Thomas Landers
Day 4 - west of Punch Bowl
Day 5 - Bourne Cons lands
Day 6 - WHOI Quisset

More detail about Day 1:
Taking the trail south from Brick Kiln for a while, over hill and dale, I got to a point where there is a wall to the left like this:At this place, I headed off in the obvious direction, downhill to the right where there was a developing gully and possibly a kettle hole. I explore all kettle holes because, especially in the Falmouth area, this is one good place to find rock piles.

I encountered a stone wall going down into the hole and, next to it, a first anomaly:You can see it is a little ring of stones next to the wall:Then, a few paces downhill, something I usually would not notice.
I suspect this is a deliberate structure since it was near the little circle and the 3 rocks forming a sketchy line parallel to the wall are too far from the wall to be random. I was very pleased, to find a relatively large (for Falmouth) rock pile across the gully from these wall anomalies. You have to be no more than a few feet from things to see them in there.
Closer:
Closest:
Although it seemed to be an isolated pile, it was only a few paces from the wall and its anomalies. So I felt this was a small but complete site. I did not see anything else and their was water a few more paces downhill.

Mavor wrote about and built a model of a similar ring of stones next to a stone wall over on the Oceanographic's Quisset property. For some time the model was displayed at the Woods Hole Historical Society. In his analysis, he assumed someone sitting in the ring. Now that I think about it, Mavor made the argument that sky-meeting-water defined a point on the horizon which was astronomically significant from the point of view of an observer sitting in the ring. If that is so, I wonder if the rock pile's edge might define a similar such horizon point, where it meets the ground - the pile was in the right sort of place to be observed on a near horizon, across the slope from the ring - visible if there was not so much brush in the way. That would make this a "marker pile".

Sad Destruction

 Keith from Mendon writes [I am adding some text at the bottom]:

Just want to send you a few pictures of Quissett Wildlife Management Area I know you once visited in Blackstone/Mendon. I just discovered this the other day while I was hiking. Apparently a huge chunk near the middle of Quissett is private property. They are clearing countless  acres for solar panels. I know there were many rock piles in this area. Find out people are using their landlocked property and selling to the solar companies. Obviously this is very counter productive to saving the planet by going solar and reducing CO emissions but destroying beautiful forests! Sad. This just ruins this wildlife area!

Keith also writes:

here's an article I found (that is a few years old) discussion about this site and ruining the forest. You know if more people ever knew about this, that clear cutting was going to happen, there would have been protests. Not only for the unknown ceremonial sites but the destruction of the beautiful woods for solar. But definitely documented native sites will stop development to some degree. I think they do this secretively as they know deep down it is wrong! Unfortunately this is happening ALOT!... I fear for many of the woods around here. I did a google satellite view and i can see many solar farms popping up in the middle of many woodlands. . .SAD.

PressReader.com - Your favorite newspapers and magazines.

***

Peter Waksman writes:

So , how's that secrecy working out?

By secrecy I mean the policy that wants to keep rock pile site locations a secret, known only to a few. The open policy alternative is a combination of public education, public sites, and active pressure applied to various industries (logging, construction) as well as conservation groups that think solar energy is more important than forest and history. Let me add to the list of "open" policies: active pressure applied to state lawmakers to enact new laws that protect stonework in the same way as we treat wetlands, here in MA: namely you are not supposed to impinge on a wetland without a special permit. 

By now, I cannot see any argument in favor of secrecy. The "few" who benefit from secrecy are an elite group of white researchers. Also some Native Americans take the position that sites that have been lost should remain lost - moldering back into the earth. But once the "few" learn about a site, it is not going to remain lost in any case. The risk of following this strategy is on full display above.

The benefits of open-ness are obvious - a precious resource from a Native American past is preserved - what might be called a "gift" -  is available for all to learn from. The risk of following this policy is a range of outcomes: from a little wear and tear to destruction. But in the latter case, the destruction will never scrape a site down to bare dirt. Common sense says that certain sites, eg effigies, are delicate and may need special treatment.

There is no point in writing a lot about this, except to suggest some obvious actions needed from the elite white community and the Native Tribes. I call on NEARA, I call on the Native Tribes, and I call on readers of this blog to sponsor a discussion with the logging industry, the conservation movement [if there is such an entity], and the state governments. Get off your asses and do something! 

                

I am trying to figure out how to penetrate the thick headedness of the Massachusetts historic preservation offices. I am told that MA is the only state whose historic officers refuse to accept the existence of sacred sites. Meanwhile I will just be a scold. If someone wants to start a new activist group, this blog will support you. For example: how about we stage a sit-in at the offices of the Massachusetts Historic Commission? We would need the clout of NEARA and of the tribes...anyone? I won't do it by myself. Maybe we could start preparing now, and do something after we've all been vaccinated. 

Finally, for reference, there are several large, well-preserved sites still safe and protected within the public Quisset conservation land (see Rock Piles: Search results for Quisset). 

(By the way, the pile in the photograph is probably a grave and probably could be protected through existing NAGPRA laws - as might be some of what was bulldozed. But how can NAGPRA be applied if no one wants to admit that these are burials? This is a different version of secrecy: keeping the true nature of these mounds a secret. Let me quote a NEARA Journal editor, who refused to publish my article about this: "the hypothesis [of burial] is the problem". (I'll get into this other fight later.)

Most of the major sites in MA are not safe. I am not at all sure about all the other wonderful sites in New England sitting on private land; where installing panels is now a quick buck for the needy and greedy who happen to own the place.