3 X's mark the spot slated for development...
I knew the place well, once a neighbor's farm,
A short walk from my parents' house,
A place of wonder both back then and now...
I first learned to read the landscape there,
Fields and wetlands and of course stonewalls,
Bedrock outcrops and farm junk and of course stonewalls,
Earthen dams and wildlife,
Turtles and Herons and Beavers,
And of course stonewalls...
Especially if they were "zigzag stonewalls:"
Flickr Album "Lost Lake" Collection:
By 2008, I'd unlearned a certain bias against the thought that all "stonewalls" were of post contact origin and that a zigzag row of stones might not be an accidental construction of field clearing stones thrown up against a Snake or Virginia Rail fence made of wood...
Zigzags and linear stone rows on a LiDar image,
Some are quite massive and are easily seen,
While some others don't show all that well,
Especially those bordering former Indigenous "wetland gardens"...
This photo below was taken facing north/north northwest,
A probable Snake Effigy on the outcrop behind it:
The Distribution Center would obliterate the Indigenous Stonework Effigy:
Another spot along the massive row of stacked stones,
A Qusukqaniyutôk, a ‘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.) - Nohham Rolf Cachat-Schilling
Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society, Vol. 77, No. 2 Fall
2016
https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1202&context=bmas
Stones stacked on a boulder,
A "Stone Prayer,"
A káhtôquwuk:
A kind of stone pile,
Or a stone heap,
something that is heaped high,
ceremonially,
religiously,
by placing one stone above another stone,
“Invested with prayers for the balance of
the universe.”
http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2022/03/kahtoquwuk-stone-prayers.html
I'm pretty sure that this "site" is included in the Nonnewaug or CT Cluster #3
in Dr. Curtiss Hoffman's inventory of suspected Indigenous Stone Constructions:
I'm not a Tribal Historic Preservation Officer
and can't give this an official designation as a
Ceremonial Stone Landscape site
but I'm very reasonably certain that it is...
Possibly, a Turtle Effigy:
A smaller Snake or Great Serpent Effigy:
An overlay with an eye and some horns:
Certain features, such as the linked outcrops and boulders etc., are reminiscent of features found in the Oley hills of PA, some of which are quite possibly thousands of years old, once thought to be "colonial or post colonial field clearing stones:"
"More than 5000 rock structure sites are found in northeastern United States, but their cultural attribution has long been debated. Some argue than many are prehistoric in origin, while others maintain they all date to colonial times. Few have been dated, and of those that have, the association of the dated material and the rocks can be challenged. Here, we provide luminescence analysis on the rocks themselves at a large site in eastern Pennsylvania. Our results suggest an age coeval with the Adena culture of the Ohio Valley."
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0197693120920492?icid=int.sj-abstract.similar-articles.3
Added Monday, December 04, 2023
To the
Watertown CT Planning and Zoning Commission:
My name is Tim MacSweeney, a former
Watertown Resident from 1956 to 1974 who has spent a great deal of time
exploring the stone walls, trails, ponds, fields, and woodlands of the Panilaitis
Farm, now a proposed site of development that includes a 767,000 sq. ft.
distribution center and 150 units of residential housing.
In 1990, I became interested in what has since
become known as Native American Ceremonial Stone Landscapes and have spent the
last 33 years as an Independent Researcher of these types of Cultural Landscapes.
My particular area of study is the stacked stone structures that are often
misidentified as “Yankee Farmer’s Stone Walls.” It was in fact on the property
in question, the former Paniliatis Farm, that I first observed what are known
as Zig-zag stone walls, conjectured to be remnants of colonial agriculture, the
stone remains of field clearing stones tossed against wooden Virginia Rail
Fences that have since decomposed, an idea popularized by the artist and writer
Eric Sloane in the 1950s.
In recent years, similar stone constructions,
also long believed to be related to farming by European Americans over the last
400 years, have proven to be far older. One such Ceremonial Stone Landscape in Pennsylvania
has been dated by a process known as Optically Stimulated Luminescence to 500 B.C. according to a study by James
Feathers and my friend Norman Muller.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0197693120920492?icid=int.sj-abstract.similar-articles.3
Another site in Massachusetts appears to be
about 3,595 years old, according to
a study by Shannon Mahan of the Geosciences and Environmental Change Science
Center.
https://www.usgs.gov/data/optically-stimulated-luminescence-osl-data-and-ages-selected-native-american-sacred-ceremonial
On the landscape that was the former Paniliatis
Farm, these rows of stones border the wetlands, pass over out crops of bedrock,
and sometimes become linear rows of stones, all characteristics that are very
similar those found in the sites in PA and MA, as well as at a Preserve in
Hopkinton, Rhode Island whose age is in the range of 1570-1490 C.E (or 490 ± 40 years ago).
I'm neither a credentialed
Anthropologist/Archaeologist nor a Tribal Historic Preservation Officer and
can't give this an official designation as a Ceremonial Stone Landscape site but
I'm very reasonably certain that it is...
My question to the committee
would be:
Has an Archaeological Assessment been
performed that includes consultation with Tribal Historic Preservation Offices
regarding these irreplaceable Cultural Resources?
Sincerely,
Tim MacSweeney
timmacs@yahoo.com
29 Nonnewaug Road
Woodbury CT
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