Thanks to Matt Adams and Derek Gunn for permission to use your photos!
And to Rochelle Prunty as well for an enlightening variation of serpent stacking!
So it was back around December (Friday the13th) 2022 when I just
happened upon some photos at the Facey Book page of the North East's Historical
Stone Sites Investigations and Explorations Group:
Group administrator Matt Adams wrote: "A few of us went to site yesterday before
the bad weather rolled in. The site has been called an “Indian Fort.” There we
saw the absolute largest stones any of us have ever seen making up a stone
wall. This fact alone had us skeptical that it was an “Indian fort”, the stones
were essentially large boulders. So large in fact that we doubted even a team
of the largest oxen could have moved them all into place. We figured heavy
machinery MUST have been involved."
The photos immediately reminded me of a spot I hadn't visited in years, a little over two and a half miles from home, up in a nearby Nature Center and Land Trust. Especially so, it seems, when Mr. Adams let me know that the boulders were "a second layer on top of an older wall (or row of stones). The huge boulders near where I live were also placed on a low row of stones as well, in this land trust where many Indigenous rows of stones and other features still remain "hidden in plain sight" where they were placed at some undetermined time in the past:
And yes, after searching around I found this photo above is my only surviving image.
Well unless you count this version of the same, but with an attempt to convey that it may be a snake petroform or effigy:
The boulders on top of the row of stones could be said to be the uppermost course of stones, laid down as a snake effigy, very similar to this fine image by Rochelle Prunty that is a variation in which the stones don't grow gradually smaller behind the head - much like a big lump in the body of a snake that has swallowed something larger than it's head:
Note well that neither the row of stones in MA nor CT show scars from being moved by the steel blades of a bulldozer or any of those other machines people moved stones around with in the 20th century.
The two posts previous to this one sum up my attempt to return to this Ceremonial Stone Landscape site feature which I figured would be a good way to compare the two sites with the large boulders on top of the smaller cobbles and smaller boulders. I assumed I would be easily able to do this, but instead I found there were no longer any stones remaining on the Land Trust landscape (unless there are some in the tangle of briars growing over the push pile created since at least 2016, judging from images from Google Earth):
Speaking of "push piles," Dr. Harry O. Holstein writes about a similar lack of modern heavy machinery (such as bulldozers) evidence in undisturbed sections of the snake effigy - an action that leaves a distinct imprint that even Mr. Tom Wessels would agree with - missing in both MA at the alleged Indian Fort site, as well as in Woodbury CT before the stones were removed, but apparent at the site in Alabama where the effigy had been disturbed in the recent past:
"Since the linear stone wall is located directly on the edge of the ridge crest and directly behind the bulldozed area, it is unlikely this feature is the result of recent earth-moving activity. However, in most areas adjacent to this linear feature, there is no evidence of machine tracks or push piles. Also, the wall is constructed of loose stone quartz cobbles similar to the serpentine pavement and does not contain any quartz pebbles or intermixed soil typical of the recent push piles. This wall appears to be comparable to the linear stone wall features found at other stone structure sites throughout northeast Alabama, thus lending credence to the possibility that it may be of prehistoric origin..."
Preliminary investigations at the Skeleton Mountain site, 1CA157, Calhoun county, Alabama
https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=googlescholar&id=GALE|A200132376&v=2.1&it=r&sid=AONE&asid=507a7772
This one boulder (in MA) has at least three distinguishing characteristics shared by other Turtle Effigies:
In Woodbury CT, this is only one of several turtle effigies that make up the larger snake effigy:
Note the shape of that turtle shell above and Mr. Gunn's photo below:
So:
I may have some other images on a DVD/CD or even Floppy Disc and if I (or my heirs) ever do locate them, I will certainly be happy to post them up (or leave instructions to do so in my Will and Last Testament)...
In the meantime, I lifted a few more Adams/Gunn photos of yet another third site that may be familiar to those students (or critics) of the Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscape, as the phenomena is becoming known as, which the astute observer may note some similarities as well as some differences of variation in these three sites that are most likely Indigenous creations...
And of course, the most photographed stone of the bunch, the one which Diane Dix pointed out had a bird-like figure pecked into it, back when the book Manitou was "in the works:"
Jump to the next part of this little story:
This is wonderful. Thanks for sharing.
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