Capstones Defined (sort of)

Footnotes for your fancy field book

Above: A: An “Estate stone wall” in Washington CT, wide at the base and exhibiting field stone capstones.

B: Very large Qusukqaniyutôkansh exhibiting Indigenous Iconography.

Serpent heads at a gateway with Manitou Stone:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2017/08/estate-wall-or-possible-qusukqaniyutok.html

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-other-walls.html
https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2014/11/serpent-gateway.html

https://www.flickr.com/photos/34580529@N04/albums/72157688389202965/with/36770810922

“Subtype: Ornate – (The) wall need not be ostentatious, though many are. Most were laid, rather than stacked, with architectural and aesthetic concerns, rather than stone disposal or territorialism, being paramount. Being expensive to build, ornate double walls are often called estate walls, especially when they are high and associated with hedges.

Above: Another “stone wall” in Litchfield CT exhibiting fieldstone capstones.

     The most common variant of the ornate double wall is the capped wall, which is perhaps the most common style around public cemeteries, and identified by quarried stone blocks, usually granite, marble or sandstone, laid on a fieldstone base. Slightly less common is the quarrystone wall, which is built entirely of quarried stone, and therefore, by definition, an ornate wall. Copestone walls are also common, especially in colonial-era English towns. They were built by placing the final tier of stones on edge across the double wall, to produce a fence-like top (related to the spikes, hedges, and broken glass) to prevent climbing or sitting on the wall. Informally, the most ornate of all is the turreted wall, in which pedestals, resembling the turrets on medieval castles, are built into the wall, clearly for show. Of course, any of these can occur with the others. A final variant of ornate wall is the guard wall, which is ornate by virtue of its height of more than five feet, and usually includes other ornamentation.” – Robert Thorson

http://stonewall.uconn.edu/investigation/classification/toward-a-stone-wall-taxonomy/classes-within-the-stone-domain/stone-walls0/

Suggested Subtype: Indigenous Ornate

     The row of stones is artistically laid to resemble a Big Snake (Effigy) and is at the same time composed of effigies similar to design motifs (Indigenous Iconography) important to the pre-contact Indigenous cultures in the North East, used in other forms of artwork.

     The detail of the first capstone in the first stone wall pictured that caught my attention had a  triangular shaped quartzite stone below it, much like a turtle's head below a shell:

      I considered a moment or two the possibility that this was a deliberate placement, resembling a turtle head beneath a turtle shell or carapace, a cultural clue as to who built this “estate stone wall” of undetermined age (or of an actual estate). Was this a representation in stone of a turtle? One is just a possible coincidence, while more than one suggests a pattern (although now I am updating that number in that statement with a paraphrase of the old Archy semi-joking observation that: One (Stone Cultural Representation of a Turtle) is an accident, two (Stone Turtles ) is a coincidence and three (Stone Turtles) is a conspiracy - and add "Who is going to count all the Stone Turtles in this Stone Structure?):

Farther along, on the same row of stones, these two display shells and heads (with eyes) below a nuchal notch, assumed capstones that greatly resemble snapping turtles:

Another shell, nuchal, and head combination, a repetition of the cultural pattern: 

Below, a possible "turtle metate" or grinding slick and "turtle foreleg mano stone" not returned to storage spot:

 

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2017/09/note-on-some-turtle-shell-revelations.html

    Would I find this pattern of "turtle head like and testudinate capstone" in another location, on another "estate stone wall” with capstones, such as the place where that second photo above was taken?

Possibly:

And in the row below the capstones, the pattern of including, by stacking stones in an artistic manner, effigies and geometric patterns of cultural significance repeats, as in this example in Washington CT:

And in the Litchfield row of stones:

What we, as "stone wall" researchers, see depends on what we look for,

"waste piles of tossed or stacked or thrown stone from 1620 onward,"

or the Indigenous Iconography of "Snakes and Turtles,"

just as a beer can in the woods is evidence of modern society...

Stolen and cropped enhanced photo from:

http://www.boltonedfoundation.org/bcef_pix_thorson.htm