Next Two by the Road

So, you may be wondering, "What do the next point stones look like?"

Here's the next one...

Natural forces moved the top stone, as did the guy doing roadside mowing for my town. There was a fresh mark last year, but I can't see it now...


I find I don't see much in it today...







Then there's the one after that...










That was spring time and just today
I needed some tomato stakes, so I cut some from around this point stone...









And since Blogger is actually letting me post photos - unlike the past two days - here's the next most visible one, much further down, past the area disturbed when my septic system was re-done many years ago and the guy put in a little access-way with his back hoe/loader.


There's a gentle rise from the road to the stone row. The ground rises sharply above the zigzag, levels out in the Old Garden area. If I stood on the stone, I'd be just a little bit beloweye level to the Garden...


These might have been tossed from the garden, but I think I see abrader stones, some hammer stones, and maybe in time I'll notice other sorts of tools etc. One of my thoughts about these rows is that it's handy for stone tool storage, especially if arrainged in a turtle-like manner - hammer stones, hand axes, abraders, etc. make good feet...

Roadside Zigzag

Down by the roadside at the north end of my driveway, newer stonework meets older zigzag stone work.

 

Note: Looking back  at old posts, I came across this in 2024.

This post has a mind of its own and refuses to be edited,

so I'll simply add this:

This part is sort of disturbed, I think, but farther along, is a point stone of the ancient zigzag...

Please note that these smaller stones weren't just sitting there on top of these two large stones; they had fallen and migrated into the driveway. I didn't know where else to put them; at least I didn't toss them across the road, which may be what other people who lived here did in the last 300 years...

Notice how nicely these stones seem fitted together...



Just lately, thinking about the remnants of rows in my yard, I took a closer look down here, even cleared some brush and debris...

I somehow get the impression that the biggest stone might be a turtle face.
I see the suggestion of eyes and a beak as I look at it.




(Click this one!)


But having just noticed the newest turtle in the chickenyard, and looking for that "low-back" shape, like a mud turtle or painted turtle, a different stone (circled in red and then black in the close-up) caught my attention. It's to the right of the biggest stone...


I thought that the stone below it might be the head of a turtle, but brushing away the dirt under the carapace stone (with an actual brush), I now think I'm seeing the plastron stone that's migrated down hill and under the carapace that's also migrated down over the years...

I added some eyes and nostrils to the photo with my paint program...

One isn't Good, But Two is Better

“Histories, like Cothren’s,” the archeologist said to me, “Are what we call “Grandfather Stories – they may or may not be true.” He stirred his coffee and went on to tell me about empirical evidence, excavation of mounds with no bones inside them, and about repeated patterns being the basis of Archeology...

I pasted that in from Rock Piles Tuesday, February 28, 2006 and was thinking about that...

The same guy told me that a single rock that looks like anything - a turtle or bear or Elvis- means nothing, but more than one turtle rock or Elvis or the faces on Easter Island made the same way, out of the same stone, facing the same way etc. does mean something and is that repeated pattern that is the basis of Archeology...

So this one doesn't mean much alone, I guess...











But the second one adds some "empirical evidence..."



Both made the same way, both made out of the same sort of granite with the same diagonal quartz vien, both facing the summer sunrise...




You'll have to click on the picture below to see the labels clearly...

July 18

Today I see another repeat of a turtle face, up by the old chicken yard.

Looks just like the one on the new turtle that looks like the old turtle.

These mounds look connected but separate today; these mounds look like turtles on turtles on turtles. I see faces and legs and shells, but some could be both - maybe they are.

I'm thinking part of the puzzle is that the parts are all of similar stone - except of course for the one's that aren't.

And then there's a big turtle face to the left of the old turtle, the first chicken yard turtle. I brushed aside debris and here's yet another turtle looking toward a little bit north of east, the summer sunrise...

Funny...

Funny how I'm looking at things right in my yard.
Funny the things I didn't notice until now.

"What you see is an illusion of what you see until you learn to see what you see," is ancient wisdom from the Dagara people of Burkina Faso, Africa.

The coop is up on top of one of a series of retaining walls; my house is so old that all those people walking around etc. eroded the ground (the wall at the lowest point is the retaining wall of 1850 made out of the former central chimney).

Step up onto the next human built terrace and here are the mounds and turtles, where the chickens scratched them out. I used my leaf blower to clear leaves off the rock piles, did a little raking...

"Great Moments" scan from Sketchpad

"The old fence formed a rectangular Chicken Yard. Mr. M----- gave me some chicken wire and posts one day.

So I enlarged the Chicken Yard..."









"The New Fence Encircled Piles of Junk. Under the Junk were Stones.
When Arthur Judson fed his chickens, he would put the pans of feed on the stones. The chickens began the excavation by scratching the ground, pecking for food."

I guess from 1700 and something on, it was easier to dump trash on piles of stone rather than move the piles of stones and then dump trash.















Within a few years, working from sun-up to sun down, seven days a week, the Chicken Archaeologists had uncovered ancient mounds and a composite sculpture of a turtle..."

Lucky day

I had a little break and cleared some trees and weeds from around some mounds I was going to send to Peter. I mean pictures of the mounds, not the actual mounds. I had been meaning to do this since February, and was glad to get to it...


Eventually I got these two photos that includes a snapping turtle petroform I've mentioned before (Remind me to tell you about "Great Moments in Chicken Archaeology" and scan the drawings etc.).




















This is along remnants of a stone row that meets at the Turtle One junction of rows up at the border of the mast forest (I think)....



Before I got very far, clipper in hand.
I looked down to see
another almost identical turtle...

..of course this mound, my original focus, might be a big turtle composed of little turtles, sort of like a 3D turtle puzzle...

Back in the Rock Garden

Back in the Rock Garden, I just sort of looked around.

Last Large Boulder

in the remnant of the stone row, maybe a low, flat sort of turtle carapace...

And the next is really a turtle head stone, with that other stone, that is of the same sort of stone, might be a foot. I peeled back the myrtle that had grown in what turned out to be a depression that looks suspiciously like turtle claws on a turtle foot (turned on it's side and a couple feet away from the head stone).

I mean they might be turtles, of course.

Because I've heard that Indians around here didn't build stone rows ...

On the Borderline

The other day my friend asked me, "What is the back border of your property?" He pointed toward the north of our yard where 25 year old trees stand, screening us from the eyes of our neighbors.
"Well, most people would call it a 'stone wall,'" I said, and we headed toward the wall to walk it.

The Happiness Farm Compound, as we call it, has dwindled down to a little over three acres - that's another story for another time.

Anyway, you'd think I'd know this boundary better than I really do, but I'd bet it had been ten years since I walked along that stone row.

Besides finding some of the wall "missing," I sort of noticed some testudinate shapes here and there.
And:
Since some of the wall or fence or row or the border is missing, I should photograph it all. Goes with the archeology of the house, part of the "Changes in the Land," the Big Picture...



Large end-boulder at junction of two rows. There's a state highway above this row....







And you might wonder about this until you see it from different angles:







A turtle petroform, perhaps, jostled around, the right foot fallen, the carapace ajar, but the head stone still resting on the plastron stone.


I brushed away the trash, removed the root layer, exposed the tops of some buried stones, and will wait to see what happens next...