Continuing, the next day, from: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2014/03/cultural-trap.html, wondering if I can
actually keep up the analogies and court room metaphors (compounded with
deciding against actually revisiting the site in real life and getting some
better photo images – we’ll instead have to suppose that the judge will caution
the Defense for using such poor quality photos as evidence):
The Cultural Scene Investigation ("CSI Madison" in the TV version) team tries to
deduce the former historical usage of the area in question. The oldest
available aerial photography is from 1934:
It is greatly suspected that the area was not
plowed, owing to the rocky nature of the land and the availability of
floodplain fields that were prime targets of early Anglo-European acquisition
since they had already been used by Indigenous People as, and here again is a
little cultural bias, horticultural fields. As Dr. Lavin writes: “Planting
activities are called “horticulture” rather than “agriculture” in Native
Connecticut because they were only one part of the economy, not its foundation
(pg. 203), because the archeological evidence shows that the traditional
seasonal rounds to collect wild plant and animal foods still continued as they
had for a very long time. On the other hand, William Cronon, in Changes in the
Land, does call it “an agriculture” that didn’t look orderly to Europeans “accustomed
to monocultural fields,” since corn mounds were also planted with beans that
grew up cornstalks as well as squashes and pumpkins that spread along the
ground, discouraging weeds and retaining soil moisture. Cronon adds in not
only the fact that Indigenous women, by the Late Woodland period, by doing most
of the planting and gathering contributed about 75% of foodstuff, but also adds
that a kind of agro-forestry had been developed, a sort of tending of what
Europeans considered a “wilderness” with the use of low intensity scheduled
ground fires which are very different from the wild crown fires we see on TV that our cultural
bias draws to mind.
There’s been an increase in the study of this fire maintenance by Indigenous Peoples all over the world in the last thirty years, and here on the ground in Connecticut, I sort of
maintain that what have been called early colonial "dumped" stone walls may actually be carefully and artistically made Indigenous
made fuel breaks to control those fires.
And this was probably done with some Ceremony, like
Renewal Ceremonies documented in Northern California (to name just one of many
places). Much mention is made by many early European visitors and colonial residents
of Indians using fire to keep forests and hill tops brush free for hunting as
well as the occasional mention of using fire to drive game animals, something
that also would involve Ceremony or ritual Hunting Magic as it is sometimes referred
to.
Perhaps an untrained but self-educated amateur like
me might be called in as a witness who believes that animal effigies are a
distinctive repeated pattern in Indigenous stonework, ever since coming upon
what might be a Tobacco Sacrifice Stone that greatly resembles a Bear’s head
(and cleverly work in the photos I took yesterday):
And of course let me add another animal effigy on
another boulder quite near (a good scientist would have measured this distance
sometime between 1996 and now), quite possibly a deer head, which seems
important since deer remains are very prevalent at archaeological sites, and
are most often described as the animals hunted in drives (such as the one Champlain wrote about and some other guy who never actually saw one made the following famous lithograph of ):
(Photo of a 1996 photo - see: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2010/03/taking-part-rock-pile-without-taking-it.html)
So let me just flop a couple images so that west is
on the top of each and mash together the oldest and newest aerial images I
could find of this particular place in the “Whodunnit?”
And let me get those land use experts (all played by
me actually) to state that they suspect the land was used to pasture domesticated
grazing animals, such as horses and cows, oxen and sheep. These same experts suspect
that the area of “pasteurization” (as one of me jokingly puts it) may have been
larger or may have been wood lots – places where early colonists let pigs run
loose to forage in the wild (as another of me puts it) or the Mast Forest
maintained by the Indigenous People who had lived here for thousands of
generations (as the one of me who read Changes in the Land, 1491 by Charles C.
Mann and many other works about Cultural Landscapes argues with those other mes). We also agree we don’t
really know what those funny lines are on the ’34 aerial around the present day
“wood road,” probably originally a “cart path,” as those kind of experts love
to call those field access roads. They show up here and there on these and other images stolen online from the CT State Library Website:
A wider capture (looking north to south) shows more rows of stones (and many more not in rows but possibly in piles, but maybe not) that at
this point haven’t been closely examined, but seem to lend a little credibility
to the being out of the “plow zone:”
And then
we’ll zoom back to that “window” and the doctored image created by that amateur
who claims there is a degree of artistic stacking and careful placement of
stones in Indigenous stonework so that animal effigies important in their
culture (and survival) are suggested by that placement (whether he knows
exactly which animal it is or not), by adding in some eyes and nostrils and stuff:
You will note that the avocational witness (sounds better than ametuer, doesn't it?) has
included a clam shell (especially if you open the above image in its own window) to burn a little kinnikkinnick or tobacco mixture in at
some point before taking the life of a game animal in respect – noting that the
possible game drive (or run) may possibly take advantage of the afternoon sea
breeze coming inland from Long Island Sound would keep the hunter upwind of the
deer or other animals whose remains are most often found in archaeological
sites…
You might notice that lighter colored stone at about
the 4 O’clock point of the “window” that the hunter might be looking through
while concealed behind the “barricade.” The court orders an expert to examine
this stone to see if it is perhaps a type of shaft abrader (or something) known
to be used by the Indigenous People who lived in the area at some point in
time:
(And the court recesses until next time I start writing again...)
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