One Turtle Head - and One Turtle Shell

"There are a few ways in which these "turtle head stone and shell combinations"

do resemble turtles, as well as a few ways in which they do not."

"Turtle One"  1996

   It is not just examples of those large snakehead plus snake-like body, often undulating vertically and horizontally or even in a zigzag pattern, "stone walls" that I keep an eye out for. I also look for turtle effigy-like stones, made in combination with another stone, incorporated into the row of stones which is the larger effigy. Sometimes it's a plain stone, but sometimes it can also be turtle head-like stones with apparent eyes upwards, with a carapace stone, and even sometimes feet. Capstones are used as a distinguishing characteristic to identify formal Estate Walls, yet I find sometimes there is a simple "Turtle" head-like stone below some capstones as if it were a simple upper shell of a turtle effigy that will cause me to pause in my former "This is a Euro-American Estate Wall" assessment:

   Walking along that same “stone wall,” I observed a more complicated construction, a pair of turtles, with an apparent protruding nuchal notch in each shell - when a reasonable person might begin to detect a pattern related to Iconography often found in other forms of Indigenous "Art," in a wide variety of media:

  Those two were in the same "Estate Wall," while this one is 80 miles away, by a salt marsh where Diamondback Terrapins were almost hunted to extinction to provide turtle soup to NYC restaurants. There are a few ways that this capstone combination does resemble a certain species of terrapin and a few ways that it does not. The stone shell does resemble the scutes of the terrapin in a way, while the colors and textures of the stone head and feet do seem to much the same.

 And I didn't find that shell in place; I brought it along to create the photo, suggesting it may have been a place for a respectful turtle hunter to make a tobacco sacrifice before venturing into the salt marsh below:

There is a high degree of probability that this snapping turtle incorporated into this circa 1700 retaining wall was intentionally “dressed” to resemble a specific species of turtle by Indigenous stoneworkers using European tools who were living at the Nonnewaug Wigwams, building a "watch house" site for the early Pomperauge Plantation in present day Woodbury CT, the "Edge of the Wilderness" at that time: