Posted on May 11, 2022 by Thorson Robert
"Years ago," writes Robert Thorson, "I was traveling through the small town of Putre in northern Chile, when I saw something astonishing. The shape, size, and composition of its ancient stone walls in the high Andes at an elevation of 3500 meters (11,060 feet) were remarkably similar to those I’d seen in the lowland hills of interior New England. Though the inhabitants of pre-Columbian South America were raising camelids rather than sheep and cows, and though they were worlds apart from post-Columbian North American Yankees, their primitive farmstead stonework was remarkably similar. Why? Because the same three fundamental factors came together in time and space: the need to enclose grazing animals in heavily glaciated terrain underlain by crystalline igneous and(or) high-grade metamorphic rock.
Similarly, The Distinctively Basque Stone Shelters of California’s White Mountains, are remarkably similar to some I’ve seen in New England because the same three factors were controlling the outcome: animal enclosure, glaciated terrain, and hard crystalline rock. This new, 2022, article by Michael R. Wing, Elizabeth H. Wing, and Amin M. Al-Jamal, describes the shelters built during the mid 19th century to protect sheep grazing in the high meadows of the White Mountains of high eastern Sierras of California. The phrase “distinctly Basque” refers not to a cultural style of construction, but to the certain historic knowledge that they were built by Basque (or adjacent French) herders.
The captioned illustration above reproduces their Figure 1, a photo of Big Stone Shelter, which located above tree line at an elevation of 3840 meters (12,600 feet), even higher than in Putre, Chile. Its features –a glacially rounded boulder, a mix of angular and milled stones, the overall form, and the pattern of stacking– are identical to those of primitive fieldstone walls in New England. And though this shelter is a small enclosure rather than a wall around a land parcel, New England has many such small enclosures in its formerly de-forested highlands, or as niches attached to walls. Whether some or all of these were roofed with organic material that has since decomposed is unknown.
The similarities in expedient stone construction built by indigenous inhabitants in the high Andes, Basque herders in California Sierras, and farmers in New England demonstrate the adage that form follows function, regardless of historic or cultural setting. Such walls are ecofacts as much as they are artifacts.
Of course, the story of stone structures everywhere is much more complex than the simple connections made above. And these three connections are only a few among many. But the conclusion is always the same. Beneath cultural overlays, the expedient architectural requirements of herding animals in rocky glaciated landscapes produces similar results."
Accessed from: https://stonewall.uconn.edu/2022/05/11/stone-shelters-in-the-sierras-and-new-england/
The Distinctively Basque Stone Shelters of California’s
White Mountains
Abstract
"Basque and French shepherds in California’s White Mountains
built dry stone shelters that persist today. Despite French names carved on
logs associated with a few of these structures, the typical pattern for these
shelters is Basque: they closely resemble the cabañas pastoriles (shepherd’s
huts) of Bizkaia. A square floor plan with walls about one meter high enclose a
single chamber. The stone work is carefully laid to make one wall face. A
narrow doorway, often in a corner, faces downhill in any direction except west
and can be flanked by low stone “spurs”. A fireplace is usually built into the
south wall. Boulders too large to move are usually in the western wall or
northwest corner. Metal, glass, wood, bone or leather artifacts are present.
Typically Basque arborglyphs (carvings in aspen trees) are found nearby at
lower elevations. It is unclear whether the White Mountains shelters originally
had roofs."
Recommended Citation
Wing, Michael R.; Wing, Elizabeth H.; and Al-Jamal, Amin M.
(2022) "The Distinctively Basque Stone Shelters of California’s White
Mountains," BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal: Vol. 9 : Iss. 1 ,
Article 4.
https://doi.org/10.18122/boga.9.1.4.boisestate
Available at: https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/boga/vol9/iss1/4
Aboriginal Alpine Ceremonialism in the White Mountains, California
Abstract: “At 3,609 m. (11,840 ft.) elevation in the White
Mountains of Eastern California is a site containing 216 rock features
consisting of cairns, pits, and other stacked-rock constructions but very few
artifacts. Two obsidian bifaces, two milling tools, and lichenometric dating
point towards site occupation between 440 and 190 cal B.P., contemporaneous
with the White Mountains Village Pattern, which was marked by intensive
seasonal occupations of multi-family groups in the alpine ecozone of the range.
Though the site’s features are similar to facilities associated with
artiodactyl hunting across the American West, their diversity, abundance, and
distribution are more consistent with ceremonially-oriented sites on the
Plains, in the Mojave Desert, and especially on the Plateau. This, in
conjunction with the site’s setting, suggests that there were ritual functions
associated with the site, and that the ceremonial use of high-altitudes has
been overlooked in the region’s research history.”
https://escholarship.org/content/qt71d2g30s/qt71d2g30s_noSplash_0005b610d8eb3ffac3aaad128f8c8aff.pdf
"When the novice had recovered she was taken into the high mountains in the summertime by her mentor and her male relatives (as many as ten of them). They went to a prayer seat, cekce>l, a semicircular enclosure of rock – sometimes river rock brought from below ... . ... the novice and her teacher swept the seat carefully [http://texts.00.gs/Standing_Ground,_5.htm]." ~ Thomas Buckley : Standing Ground : Yurok Indian Spirituality. U of CA Pr, Berkeley, 2002.
A Rock Feature Complex from Northwestern California
Joseph L. Chartkoff: "
American Antiquity
Vol. 48, No.
4 (Oct., 1983), pp. 745-760 (16 pages)
Published By: Cambridge University Press
https://www.jstor.org/stable/279774
níswonki - an enclosure, "three bends" (Nipmeuw, shwihwakuwi, Narragansett). https://www.academia.edu/40876479/Assessing_Stone_Relics_in_Western_Massachusetts_Part_II_Patterns_of_Site_Distribution
Here in the Northeast, an other Algonquian language term:
świhwákuwi (viz. świk+wāgawi, ‘it grows around,’ Unami Lenapeuw, Zeisberger 1995:151, 173; świ, ‘three’ for 3-sided - Mohegan Nation 2004:98) form open ellipses that the author considers roughly equivalent to the “nave” of a Christian church…”
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