Fixin' for Fun (in RI)

 

Can this be fixed??

Just for the Record

Above: Slide from Power Point Presentation by Timothy H. Ives

“A Brief Social History of Stone Heaps”  Apr 23, 2021 https://youtu.be/rQV05I4N6O8

Just for the record: My first name is Tim, not Timothy.

Just for the record: I was a NEARA member for one year although I wrote up some guest pieces for the online magazine.

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2007/01/indian-cave.html

Just for the record: That “Indian Cave” may be an example of a stone sweat lodge rather than a hypothesized sheep barn since “Indians did not build with stone until taught to do so by European settler colonists” - in this part of the world, anyway.

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2011/12/indian-cave.html

   

Just for the record: One of those stone features in Pennsylvania mentioned in “Stone Rows and Boulders; a Comparative Study” by Norman Muller

{ https://rock-piles.com/stonerows.pdf } dead link in 2022

(Muller, Norman E. “Stone Rows and Boulders: A Comparative Study,” New England Antiquities Research. 7. Association, 1999 Traditional Cultural Places - October 27, 2022

https://parkplanning.nps.gov › showFile ) 

has a “preliminary” date of 500 BCE attached to it:

  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0197693120920492

Also Just for the Record, Me in 1984:

Also Just for the Record, Me circa 2014:

What IS Wrong with Our "Stone Walls?"

 “Most of us today have had no experiences to challenge that view.”

    Here’s another article I somehow missed until just this morning, from somewhere in Massachusetts, where I think I may have seen one or two photos of suspected Indigenous Stonework, if I recall correctly:

 “What's Wrong with Our Stone Walls?” - Acton Historical Society – (11/16/2019)

https://www.actonhistoricalsociety.org/blog/whats-wrong-with-our-stone-walls

   Of course this article tells that “One of New England’s familiar sights is a stone wall in a forest, a remnant of land use in days gone by.”

   Of course this article tells us: “Based on what we can see, many of us assume that farmers would have removed the many rocks from their fields and stacked them in two- to three-foot-high walls to delineate their property from their neighbors’ or to serve as a barrier to animals.  The former landscape that we envision would have been open fields and gardens surrounded, if not by wooden fencing, by relatively low stone walls.”

   Of course this article tells us: “Most of us today have had no experiences to challenge that view.”

(Lifted from a presentation extremely critical of Ceremonial Stone Landscapes:

A Brief Social History of Stone Heaps: https://youtu.be/rQV05I4N6O8)

(Above: a similar low "Snake Gateway" in Woodbury CT)

   Of course I am going to disagree with that statement, thirty plus years into experiences that have caused me to think very critically about challenging the idea that “stone walls” arrived sometime after 1492 or 1620  or perhaps the time when Indigenous Homelands turned into Plantations in the New England town you might perhaps live in, have visited or plan to visit.

    The Acton Historical Society tells us: “Visitors to our recently refurbished landscape are surprised to discover that above our stone walls at the Hosmer House are crossed, wooden poles.  Why would we ruin the look of “iconic” stone walls?”

   I’ll partially credit the Historical Society for telling us: “As it turns out, while our imagined Massachusetts farm landscape is not entirely fictitious, farmers often supplemented their rock walls with wood to make enclosures higher and less likely to let animals escape.”

   Of course I am going to disagree when they repeat this same old story: “According to Robert Thorson’s Stone by Stone, a hybrid fence of stone on the bottom and wood on the top was very common.  The stone walls, in many cases, were “linear landfills” to give farmers somewhere to put the rocks cluttering their fields, and the wood raised the height of the fences to the 3.5-5 feet considered necessary to block the movement of animals.”

    In my experience, in my neighborhood, where an English Plantation collided with a Late Woodland/Contact-era Indigenous Village known as the Nonnewaug Wigwams in 1672 (or 1673), the oldest of the “stone walls” may have already been there, separating yet connecting sections of land. One could say that here in Nonnewaug (and beyond), “Stone walls parse the land into finer pieces, creating diverse microclimates and ecosystems and opportunities for creatures of all types,” as Robert M. Thorson is quoted as saying in “Stone Walls are a Habitat All Their Own” by Joe Rankin (Mar 16, 2018), found here:

https://www.benningtonbanner.com/opinion/columnists/stone-walls-are-a-habitat-all-their-own/article_1127fa6f-1ed5-5282-9e9b-a2cd53bc3bab.html

 

    The Acton Historical Society closes their article by telling us that “(The) new walls are a reminder that we need to keep our minds open to learn more about the lives of Acton’s former residents.  Even commonly-held ideas of how things were in earlier days may simply reflect the fact that our frame of reference is very different from theirs.”

   Of course I am going to tell you that yes we do need to keep our minds open about the lives of the former residents of what has been called New England (and beyond)for just a few hundred years.

   Of course I am going to invite you to consider that some “stone walls” and other “stone structures” are beginning to reveal construction dates that go back hundred and even thousands of years, as more sites are investigated, especially when optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) is being used to test soil samples:

Showing posts sorted by relevance for query OSL:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=osl

https://rockpiles.blogspot.com/search?q=osl

   Of course while I don’t have the financial means to pay for OSL tests of the soil beneath all the “stone walls” in my neighborhood (and beyond), I can afford to pay attention to certain patterns I and others observe in the stacking of stones, particularly if the row of stones begins with a boulder that resembles the head of a snake in my neighborhood (and beyond). Some of those low stone walls may have been around long before wooden rails were added to comply with early Colonial Settler fence laws…

Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Acton: https://rockpiles.blogspot.com/search?q=Acton

Inventory of Stone Features (Hopkinton, Rhode Island)

"Stone features described by local Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (THPOs)

as ceremonially (religiously and culturally) significant..."

"The age of the sample (taken from within the feature shown above) from the Site of Hopkinton, Rhode Island is in the range of 1570-1490 C.E (or 490 plus or minus 40 years ago).”

 "Ceremonial Landscapes Research, LLC works for and consults with federally recognized Tribes to support Tribal traditional values by protecting and preserving ceremonial landscapes." 

https://www.clresearch.org/

 From:

 Historic Survey and Inventory of Stone Features Located Within the Manitou Hassannash Preserve, Hopkinton, RI. Submitted to the Town of Hopkinton, July 2020. 

Martin, Alexandra; Eva Gibavic, Kenneth Leonard, and Richard Prescott.

https://www.clresearch.org/past-projects

Photos by Paul Ziobro (Ceremonial

Landscapes Research)

“Stone rows, enclosures, structures and chambers can be found in the landscapes of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Structures similar to those shown in the cover photo are documented elsewhere. The age, cultural affiliation, and purpose of these stone structures--which are found in a variety of forms, such as piles arranged in spatial configurations across landscapes, shapes suggesting animal effigies, platforms and chambers--have been the subject of much debate. Some have argued they are remnants of colonial agricultural and storage practices; others that they are prehistoric Native American ceremonial structures. Ascertaining the time periods of their creation had previously been impossible. We felt that optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) had the potential to provide meaningful insights into their origins. In June 2018, samples for luminescence dating were taken from three sites: the Pratt Hill Site near Upton, located in south central Massachusetts; the Tolba Site of Leverett, located in western Massachusetts; and the Site of Hopkinton, Rhode Island. These samples were taken from hand-dug pits beneath stone structures to depths past modern soils into the geomorphic feature upon which the stones were placed (i.e. alluvial fan or terrace). The object of this excavation was to date the placement time of the stones onto the geomorphic feature...

...The age of the sample from the Site of Hopkinton, Rhode Island is in the range of 1570-1490 C.E (or 490 plus or minus 40 years ago).”

https://www.usgs.gov/data/optically-stimulated-luminescence-osl-data-and-ages-selected-native-american-sacred-ceremonial

Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) & Ceremonial Stone Landscape features

 '"Some have argued they are remnants of colonial agricultural and storage practices; others that they are prehistoric Native American ceremonial structures...Clearly, further work is warranted at these and other sites, since the older age of 3,595 ± 260 years is an intriguing and valued look into the earliest dates of construction to these features."  - Shannon Mahan

Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) data and ages for selected Native American Sacred Ceremonial Stone Landscape features--Final Project Report Submitted to the Narragansett Tribal Historic Preservation Trust

   “Stone rows, enclosures, structures and chambers can be found in the landscapes of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Structures similar to those shown in the cover photo are documented elsewhere. The age, cultural affiliation, and purpose of these stone structures--which are found in a variety of forms, such as piles arranged in spatial configurations across landscapes, shapes suggesting animal effigies, platforms and chambers--have been the subject of much debate. Some have argued they are remnants of colonial agricultural and storage practices; others that they are prehistoric Native American ceremonial structures.

 

    Ascertaining the time periods of their creation had previously been impossible. We felt that optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) had the potential to provide meaningful insights into their origins. In June 2018, samples for luminescence dating were taken from three sites: the Pratt Hill Site near Upton, located in south central Massachusetts; the Tolba Site of Leverett, located in western Massachusetts; and the Site of Hopkinton, Rhode Island. These samples were taken from hand-dug pits beneath stone structures to depths past modern soils into the geomorphic feature upon which the stones were placed (i.e. alluvial fan or terrace). The object of this excavation was to date the placement time of the stones onto the geomorphic feature. Luminescence chronology is an ideal scientific measurement, since the physics of the phenomenon mean that it dates the last time mineral grains of quartz and feldspar were exposed to sunlight or heat above 150 °C. All sediment samples were dated using OSL on very small aliquots of <50-10 grains.

    The age of the sample from the Site of Hopkinton, Rhode Island is in the range of 1570-1490 C.E (or 490 ± 40 years ago).

From: "Ceremonial Stone Landscapes of New England" (Uploaded Aug 14, 2017)

The National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT)

https://youtu.be/35hswwxcIFI

The ages of the samples from Pratt Hill near Upton, Massachusetts, at a site that was recently desecrated by being scraped off the boulder foundation it was originally built on, are 1475-1375 C.E. (595 ± 50 years) for the top sample and 1315-1835 B.C.E (3,595 ± 260 years) for the bottom sample. These samples were obtained from dust or loess that had blown into the structure and collected in the scooped out hollow of the boulder foundation.

The ages of the Tolba site in Leverett, Massachusetts cover the ranges of 1670-1510 C.E. (430 ± 80 years), 1730-1570 C.E. (370 ± 80 years), 1420-1220 C.E. (700 ± 100 years) at the base. A sample obtained beneath a housing foundation and into the land surface very near to this site also gave an age range of 1470-1230 C.E. (670 ± 120 years). A brick used in the house manufacturing was also taken back to the lab for luminescence dating but data are not available at this time.

Construction ages of the Upton Stone Chamber: Preliminary findings and suggestions for future luminescence research

 Shannon A. Mahan a, * , F.W. Martin b, c , Catherine Taylor c, d a U.S. Geological Survey, Denver Federal Ctr., MS 974, Denver, CO 80225-5046, USA b Massachusetts Archeological Society, 50 Village Ave., Dedham, MA 02026, USA c New England Antiquities Research Association, 58 Cortland Road, Milford, NH 03055, USA d Town of Upton Historical Commission, 14 Plain St, Upton, MA 01568, USA

https://www.uptonma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif5121/f/uploads/upton_stone_chamber_-_preliminary_findings.pdf

In a previous study of OSL dating performed on sediment from the Upton Chamber Site, it was established that European contact was documented in Plymouth at 1620 C.E., in Boston at 1630 C.E. and Upton at 1660 C.E. It is interesting that most of the currently sampled stone ceremonial structure ages are falling in the Upton time frame (455 to 580 years ago, with one lower age at 700 years) except for the lower Pratt Hill sample, which is considerably older than any other previous age obtained.

 One theory is that the ceremonial structures were sacred sites that were cared for and maintained during the years of sole Native American occupation. This theory postulates that as Europeans settlers disseminated across the landscape, the disease and displacement they brought largely ended the Native population’s ability to maintain these sites and that the OSL dating documents this time of disrepair instead of an original placement of stones on a geomorphic surface. Clearly, further work is warranted at these and other sites, since the older age of 3,595 ± 260 years is an intriguing and valued look into the earliest dates of construction to these features.

Shannon Mahan

smahan@usgs.gov

Data Source:

Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center

https://www.usgs.gov/data/optically-stimulated-luminescence-osl-data-and-ages-selected-native-american-sacred-ceremonial

From the Plantation’s Watch House

 

   From the Plantation’s Watch House, the field full of “corn mounds,” where the Three Sisters of Corn, Squash, and Beans grew together, could be easily seen. The same was true of the Nonnewaug Fish Weir, a stone wall-like diagonal row of boulders in the river, that gave the name to The Nonnewaug Wigwams. Behind the Watch House, to the west, was the Mast Forest, enclosed by a border of fireproof stones, a qusuqaniyutôk or perhaps more accurately  qusuqaniyutôkansh, a series of segments of stone enclosures and entrances.

   A definition or two, the former from the scientific literature emerging in the early 21^st century, the latter mine, an artistic based impression based mostly on observations of "stone walls" over around thirty years at the time I’m writing this:

   Qusukqaniyutôk : (‘stone row, enclosure’ Harris and Robinson, 2015:140, ‘fence that crosses back’ viz. qussuk, ‘stone,’ Nipmuc or quski, quskaca, ‘returning, crosses over,’ qaqi, ‘runs,’ pumiyotôk, ‘fence, wall,’ Mohegan, Mohegan Nation 2004:145, 95, 129) wall (outdoor), fence, NI – pumiyotôk plural pumiyotôkansh.)

   Qusukqaniyutôk: “A row of stones artistically stacked using elements of Indigenous Iconography, sometimes resembling a Great Snake, often composed of smaller snake effigies as well as other effigies both zoomorphic and anthropomorphic, sometimes appearing to shapeshift into another effigy, possibly related to control of water or fire (sometimes both) on Sacred Cultural Landscapes that are becoming to be recognized as Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscapes.”

    From a perspective of distance, the largest of the Stone Snake Qusukqaniyutôk snake across the landscape, crossing over others, sometimes connecting great boulders or bedrock outcrops, sometimes along streams – and sometimes over a stream, a Musical Row of Stones, the sound of the Great Snake contentedly “purring:”

https://youtu.be/GT22fLbLw7g

     Sometimes the enclosure has an abundance of blueberries in it. Sometimes there’s a name (or a remembrance of an original name) such as cranberry Pond or Cranberry swamp, inside a stone enclosure, surrounded by other enclosures, fed by streams bordered by and sometimes diverted by rows of stones emanating from stone worked springs.

    Wildfires taught lessons to the People who first lived on the landscape and those Peoples learned to use fire to tend the landscape. It is my thought that those rows of stones, controlling fires and the flow of water, were built by the Indigenous Peoples of the Eastern gate of Turtle Island, creating one of the “World’s Largest Rock Gardens.”

   From little bits and pieces, remnants of old stones, remain while others are just thoughtlessly disturbed forever, lost pieces of a Sacred Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscape...

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2018/08/no-longer-snaking-along-blueberries.html

The 97% Solution

 

    “Evaluations of qusuqaniyutôkansh (“stone walls”) by parties who do not test their hypotheses against Northeast Algonquian cosmology, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and Rituals of Renewal on Ceremonial Stone Landscapes are doing, at best, only 3% of an investigation,” remarked Sherlock Stones to his associate, famed Rocket Surgeon John Possum. "The late Dr. Brian Jones, the Connecticut State Archaeologist spoke and wrote about that "Other 97% of the Human History," the Indigenous Peoples' History, that most people are almost entirely unaware of - or are greatly misinformed about."

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2015/05/five-things-everyone-should-know-about.html

   “Call it “The 97% Solution,” Sherlock continued. “For thousands and thousands of years, the Indigenous Peoples of what is thought of as quaint “New England” certainly had a greater opportunity to shape the landscape, using fire and (hearth-like) fuel break rows of stones than the post contact Euro-American Settler Colonists and their slaves, indentured servants, employees, and their exceptional descendants with their “Merino Sheep Walls” and soil cutting plows in the remaining 3% of the human history of the region. The example of the use of LiDar in Central and South America to reveal and discover the vast amount of Indigenous Stonework in a place where “true civilization” was thought impossible to exist in a “pristine jungle” serves well. If those southern regions were transformed into some of the world’s largest gardens, then why would it be impossible that the Indigenous Peoples at the Eastern Gate of Turtle Island, the Dawnland, could create one of the “World’s Largest Rock Gardens,” my dear Possum?”

    Dr. Possum sighed and remarked, “Well Stones, what is the truly more advanced civilization – one that creates a sustainable system of coexistence with the ecosystem or one that degrades it to such a degree that, if continued without change, in all probability leads to extinction?”

    Both men paused, pondering this.

   "Another slice of Christmas Pie?" asked Dr. Possum.

   "A plum of an idea," replied Sherlock Stones.

"Ceremonial Stone Landscapes is the term used by USET, United Southern and Eastern Tribes, Inc."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_stone_landscape

Nonnewaug, the "Fresh water fishing place"

  

 This diagonal line of boulders in the Nonnewaug River in Woodbury CT, most likely a diagonal fish weir that is probably the source of the place name Nonnewaug, just might soon disappear. Maybe on Monday, I don't know...

  The years have not been kind to the Weir since that photo above was taken in 1997. That large tree crashed through the weir and started its demise...