Above: “A Turtle Shaped Mortar” from
Connecticut’s Indigenous Peoples (2013) by Dr. Lucianne Lavin. That is my photo from 9/2008. The
“mano” or “pestle” (or "turtle head stone," depending upon your point of view) that fits
into the depression was found by gently removing the black soil from around the
spot that most likely looked to be chipped away for a nuchal notch for this
possible testudinate petroform with a specific purpose.
I guess if a
person is going to claim to see stone turtle effigies where other people see
just a “random pile of rocks,” I suppose that person might take a little time
to look at some turtle parts – and by turtle I mean both the actual reptiles of
the order Chelonii or Testudines and some details reflected in what I think may
be cultural depictions of these reptiles, sometimes “free-standing sculptures”
or petroforms, sometimes contained in stone piles that are thought to be the
results of field clearing or those really long stone piles that are a signature
landform of (post European contact) New England commonly called stone walls.
I mean, how
realistic is that supposed stone
turtle effigy? Is it really just a coincidence that what one person perceives
as a “random pile of rocks (pile of stones, really, if you want to get
technical about it) just happens to be sometimes obviously, sometimes vaguely,
reminiscent of what might be a representation of a turtle in my eyes (or your
eyes) because it really does have a number of characteristic details that
reflect actual details of the actual reptile rather than because I really want it to be a turtle Petroform
purposely made by someone at some time for some reason??
And by someone I
mean an Indigenous person, and by sometime I mean since the glaciers retreat,
and by some reason I mean just that: “some reason.” I can only offer guesses as
to why someone who lived on Turtle Island might make a cultural representation
of a turtle using, and perhaps modifying, stone.
Think about how
many times you may have read or heard about those early contact times, how the
“first settlers” began using already cleared Indian fields. Have you ever read
or heard a suggestion as to where the stones went? Think about how many times
you’ve read or heard that the Indians burned the “woods” to facilitate hunting,
which is slowly evolving into the thoughts that Indigenous People were actually
maintaining a Cultural Landscape by selective burning that was sustainable
rather than destructive (mostly), perfected with a thousand or so years of
practice? Think about how those fires
may have been controlled, how just maybe those rows of stones just might have
been fuel breaks created over that long period of time before European Contact,
a soft term for Colonial Invasion, separating what was to be burned at a
certain time for a certain reason.
And think about
how every stone wall book ever written includes the fact that the earliest of
colonial fences were made of wooden rails to satisfy a legal requirement of
claiming property ownership, the oldest of stone rows created by dumping stone
up against these post less zigzag snake rails (an easy thing to do or imagine)
or even actually placing them inside and under cross and rail fences (which
seems much harder and more easily imaginable as form of punishment).
I think about
these things because I actually live by a Village site, surrounded by these
types of stonework. I think about zigzag rows of stone because there are so
many of them in the area and I can’t find one that isn’t carefully made, just
like those linear segments of rows of stones.
And I think about
artistic cultural representations of turtles contained in these stone
constructions because they far outnumber any other possible representation of
other animals that were important to Indigenous People who lived around here,
as those people say, “forever.”
And I think that
shouldn’t be a surprise, here on what was called Turtle Island for a very, very
long time.
Any cultural
artistic representation of a turtle depends upon the artistic abilities of the
individual (or individuals, I suppose you could say) creating that artwork. I
imagine this cultural representation that just happens to include a turtle below
would be pretty realistic since all the other surviving details of the damaged
sculpture are very realistic, but I can’t easily find a close up of the turtle
for some reason. No wonder no one remembers who the artist is:
Aphrodite in Her See Thru Nightie,
Resting Her Foot on an Unmistakable (Stone) Turtle (Unknown Artist - 2nd to 3rd
century CE) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Turtle_Aphrodite_AO20126_mp3h9188.jpg
But those are both
really far away from me here in Western Connecticut. Closer to Connecticut is that
famous Bronx Turtle Petroglyph, like Ed Lenik describes (and I lifted this
photo from the Greater Astoria Historical Society website to illustrate):
But this isn’t either
a sculpture –or a Petroform.
Here is a photo of an
unmistakable Turtle petroform in the Whiteshell Provincial Park, Canada from a
fairly reliable (government) source:
“Turtle petroform
(Ken Porteous)”
But here’s a couple
amateur photos from the same place:
http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs49/i/2009/218/9/7/petroform_turtle_3_by_hcube.jpg
- and, in my amateur opinion, that there is also a petroform snake a little
west of it in the photo as well…
(This one may not be all that old...)
Like Ed says above,
the design of these clearly depict turtles (and isn’t that a rather interesting
stone that makes up the neck of the turtle above that some of you reading this
might recognize as a rhomboidal stone when viewed from the right side of the
petrofrom – in my amateur opinion…) by using stones not only as an outline, but
also more by use of a (mostly) solid carapace stone, such as some smaller stone
constructions do:
In Eastern Connecticut,
Bob Miner photographed a similar “stone concentration” that I, in my amateur
opinion, would call a very similar clearly unmistakeable testudinate depiction, rather than a
“random pile of rocks.”
(See: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2010/11/petroforms.html for more.)
The shell of the
turtle seems to be the basic ingredient in a cultural representation of a
turtle.
If you want to really
sound important and scientific, you can call that upper shell a Carapace, so I
shall include some Important Carapace Information I stole from one web site out
of many that say much the same thing about a turtle’s most distinguished (distinguishing?)
characteristic:
“The shell of turtles is the backbone of their success (pun intended;
Sorry.)…These amazing little marvels are what have kept chelonians in business
for over 230 million years. The piece of
scute directly behind the head is known as the nuchal. Then all the scutes
directly behind the nuchal are known as vertebrals. Radiating along the sides
of the shell are scutes called marginal, named of course because they are at
the margins or fringes of the shell.
Finally all the scutes inbetween the vertebrals and the marginals are
called costals, thus making up the outer surface of the carapace.”
You will note that
the few examples I have shown are not 100% anatomically accurate representations,
especially when it comes to “scutes.” And I cannot say for certain that I’ve
ever observed a possible turtle Petroform that does have the exact number of
each type of scute listed above, but I have observed many times that sometimes
but not all the time the detail of a nuchal is actually included in some
possible (or is it probable?) Turtle Petroforms.
Here’s a good example
of that nuchal notch in a possible (or is it probable??) turtle petroform:
Does it look like
this was a natural notch or does it look humanly enhanced?
Has that “head stone”
been modified?
Has a few hundred –
or a couple thousand - years of weathering rendered it impossible to tell?
I can answer that
very quickly: I don’t know.
The very first couple
of stone concentrations or combinations of artistically placed stones that I
thought just might be turtles actually have more complicated nuchal notches that seem
more like protrusions:
Above: Turtle One.
Below: “Chickenyard”
Turtle Two.
And since One is free standing while Two is incorporated into a mound,
I'll give you a third, included in a row of stones:
A thought about this
occurs to me as I think about how this may represent or reflect that older
turtles get more “gnarly” as their scutes grow as they age and that these
turtles with the more protruding nuchal scutes may be older turtles or Grand
Mother or Grand Father Turtles, perhaps the Great Turtle of various Creation
Stories recorded across Turtle Island. In fact, that first turtle, Turtle One,
as I call it, may represent the Great Turtle, claw marks on its shell from the
Beaver who placed the mud that became the soil of Turtle Island on both sides
of shell above the nuchal on that four foot long boulder:
.0.jpg)
Maybe a little more
than 100 feet east of the above Great Turtle is the youngest possible cultural
representation of a turtle I’ve been aware of, a hatchling surrounded by the
possible representations of the eggshell it has just emerged from:
In another pile of
stones perhaps all of 25 or 30 feet away, is another similar but larger
possible (probable??) artistic representation of what to me is an unmistakable
turtle, created in much the same manner - chipping stone away from the quartz crystal "head stone:"
(- and there are more like these in this same mound group.)
It makes me smile to
come across these Indigenous Creations, sometimes with that nuchal, sometimes
not, but it is yet another identifying characteristic of the artistic, rather than random, purposeful placement of a stone in a concentration such as a mound:
And by "mound" I really mean mean a Káhtôquwuk.
And as I understand it, Káhtôquwuk means, allegorically, a 'Stone Prayer.'
Or as an inclusion in
a row of stones - and sometimes they
smile back:
And that’s why I
stick my neck out and say “This probable stone cultural representation of a
turtle is also sticking its neck out from the stone that represents its
upper shell or carapace – which to a novice like myself, look to be split from
the same stone - purposely placed directly in front of a nuchal notch:”
Now, back home, on my front steps, what’s up with that
stone embedded in the crumbling (crumbled?) piece of 1960’ s mortar?
Stone Tool or Stone Turtle Shell???
Tim, I'm reading this 2014 entry in December 2023, and all I can say is: Wow. Thanks for your work. --Anne
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