Our Vanishing Ceremonial Stone Landscapes (Watertown CT)

On October 6th , 2023 the Watertown Planning and Zoning Commission received an application to convert a residential piece of property to Industrial Zoning to add 767,000 sq. ft of distribution facilities and over 150 1-2 bedroom residential rental units.

 Site Plan for the proposed Distribution Center and apartment complex:

On Dec. 6, 2023, the developer withdrew his application

and "fled the Town Hall Building."

Qusukqaniyutôkansh (pl): Rows of Stacked Stones, colloquially “stone walls” or “stone fences,” often assumed to be post contact constructions related to property ownership and agriculture.

Qusukqaniyutôk (2023): “A row of stones artistically stacked or laid using elements of Indigenous Iconography, sometimes obviously resembling a Great Snake, often composed of smaller snake effigies as well as other effigies both zoomorphic and anthropomorphic, sometimes appearing to shapeshift into another effigy, possibly related to control of water or fire (sometimes both) on Sacred Cultural Landscapes that are beginning to be recognized as Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscapes.”

From a perspective of distance, the largest of the Stone Snake Qusukqaniyutôk snake across the landscape, crossing over others, sometimes connecting great boulders or bedrock outcrops, sometimes along streams – and sometimes stacked over and hiding a stream, a Musical Row of Stones - the sound of water is the Great Snake contentedly “purring.”

Inside some enclosures, there were “gardens,” plant resources perhaps tended by fire, perhaps protected from fire, something living kept in balance, kept in production by someone offering tobacco to a serpent guardian before entering, someone singing while stacking stones, picking up and replacing her grandmothers’ and grandfathers’ stones that have fallen.

Sometimes zigzag rows of stones, sometimes linear rows of stones, sometimes snaking across the landscape, sometimes along both sides of an Indian Path or Native American Trail or an Indigenous Road that could possibly be two or ten or twelve thousand years old.

Sometimes torn from the landscape in the blink of an eye, sometimes gone forever, sometimes never to snake across the landscape again…

Sometimes I feel I'm just documenting

Our Vanishing Ceremonial Stone Landscapes  

Another smaller Snake Effigy:

Qusukqaniyutôk: (‘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