Game Drive

A Ron Smith photo of a landscape in Northern California above http://www.relicsoftheancients.com/images/Sutter%20Buttes/West%20Buttes%20Road/DSC_0113.JPG

And my enhancement to the photo below

Here I think I see Rock lines/stone rows perhaps forming what many people consider a “deer run” or a “deer drive.”  Setting fires on the inside edges of the wide area to the right, an upland prairie, Indians would send game running from the fire into a kill site by a water source on the left. The green represents a resource zone just above the spring. The small black dots are people scattered along the stone rows, perhaps scaring the deer and other game (the brown dots) into the “chute.” There are more black dots that represent hunters at the kill site, with other people behind them by the water, waiting to butcher the deer and other animals killed. The prairie would be maintained at the same time, just one section burned over, all the others protected by the stone firebreak.

In Northern California, the burning by Native People didn’t stop until about 1940. Harold Lewis, a then 60 year old Karuk man, told anthropologist Dr. John F. Salter in November, 2003:

     “I think about when I was a kid, we had a ranch down below Martin’s Ferry and every year in the spring time when the new grass come up, when the new vegetation started coming up, when the sun would come out it would fry the old stuff, we would control burn…I can still see them spots of where it was clear but there was nice hazel sticks and our cattle would be down in there eating grass and there were deer there. That’s because we were able to burn it at the right time of year and nobody was afraid of fire getting away because it was done at the right time. I remember when I was a boy I’d be scared and look out and it would be backing right down there and everybody else would be asleep. But the old man and everybody else knew that it was just going to back right down to that trail there and stop right by the house…”

http://www.mkwc.org/publications/fisheries/Karuk%20White%20Paper.pdf

Consider that the present day Hoopa, like other nearby Native Peoples, want to incorporate controlled burns into their landscape management design.

http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr217/psw_gtr217_39.pdf

Those Rock Lines (or stone rows or “Real Long Rock Piles”), connecting “landscape features,” are not merely firebreaks but they are also Spiritual Expressions of the people who built them, maintained them and knew the cultural symbolism of them. The stone rows are also paths to the prairies and places on the landscape that were Sacred Sites, places of power, camp sites at resource zones of many kinds, and perhaps much more - places to be visited during World Renewal Ceremonies or at harvest times, the “right times,” as Lewis says. “The old man” reference could be either his grandfather or perhaps the person who conducted the World Renewal Ceremonies. Details of the Ceremony, from many sources, mention that when the old man emerges from ten days in the sweat lodge, he starts a fire with a traditional drill (in a stone fire place made for the Pikiavish?), and goes to numerous places in the hills accompanied by at least one  or sometimes two firewood gatherers.

There is a lot of documentation that as part of the ”Boy’s Puberty Rite,”  stones would be piled and stacked at remote places “in the hills,” for many days at a time. How many feet of “stone fence” could a boy build during that time? How many thousands of years was this repeated? If a person could estimate the number of lost portions of the rock lines, add that to what still exist, there might be a better estimate of how many people had lived there – and a better estimate of how long as well…

…and my thoughts wander back East, where similar stones are explained away as “colonial constructions” built over the past few hundred years – passing over the Bannock Point  Petroforms  http://www.manitobaphotos.com/petroforms.htm  on the way. And  I wonder about certain places I thought I knew so well as stops along the way (in a sun-wise circle) around this floodplain where the “Wigwams” were located from 1672 until around 1740, during a possible similar Ceremony…

…and then to stone rows as hunting fences, once again.

Old post about older post: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2009/10/old-post-from-rock-piles-indian-bars.html

Winter at a stone row: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2009/10/old-post-from-rock-piles-indian-bars.html - hunting alone without burning.

A Spring in My Zip Code

I wonder if, out in Northern California, there might be stone worked springs, connected to stone rows - or rock lines. Here's one in my zip code that makes me wonder...

The closest I can come to a clear picture, like one of Ron's panoramas, is through some aerial photography:

The 1934 aerial shows many stone rows - I've followed one or two of them...

Looking South at the Spring

Looking North:

COYOTE STEALS FIRE: A KARUK MYTH

[The following is the Karuk text of a story that was tape-recorded with Julia Starritt at Orleans in summer 1950. It is presented in here in the "ethnopoetic" format of measured verse pioneered by Dell Hymes in his book In Vain I Tried to Tell You (Philadelphia, 1981). An English version was published as "A Karok myth in measured verse", in W. Bright, American Indian Linguistics and Literature, 91–100 (Berlin, 1984). The present interlinear analysis was prepared for a lecture at the Free University, Berlin, Germany, in November 1999.]

Act 1: The center of the world.

Scene 1. Coyote.

Coyote went upriver long ago to bring back fire.
They had stolen the fire, the upriver people.
And people were all just freezing,when it was gone here, the fire.
“Let me bring it back, the fire.
“I know how I can retrieve it.”

(The Karuk speaker said, “pa ni (kupa—) p ûukeev ish.”

“ the ethnopoetic:" DET 1S REP retrieve FUT)

Scene 2. Coyote and the runners.

And so then he arranged them, the people, he arranged all the swiftest people.
And he told them:“You sit a little bit upriver, and the next one sit a bit farther upriver”
finally they arrived upriver, they arrived at the upriver peoples’ country.
And to the first, Frog, he said, “Sit on the riverbank.”
And uphill—on the mountain-top, he said, “Turtle, sit here.”

Act II. Recovering the fire.

Scene 1. Traveling upriver. Coyote and the children.

And so that’s how they went upriver.
And Coyote arrived upriver.
And he saw it was deserted.
And he saw there were fires, there were forest fires, up in the mountains.
And he went in a house.
And he saw only children were there.
And he said:“Where are they?
“Where are the men?”
And the children said,"They’re hunting in the mountains.”
And he said,“I’m lying down right here,
“I’m tired.”

And he said to the children, “Let me paint your faces!
“Come on, let me paint your faces!
“You’ll look pretty thatway!”
And the children said, “Maybe he’s Coyote.”
They were saying that to each other.
And they said to him, to Coyote,
“Maybe you’re Coyote, your ears are pink.”

And he said, “No.
“I don’t even know that, where Coyote is.”
And he said:“Let me paint your faces!”
And he painted their faces.
And when he painted all
the children’s faces then he said,
“See, I’ve set water down right here, take a look in there.”

“But I’m lying down right here, I’m tired.”
In fact, he had stuck fir bark in his toes.
And then he stuck his foot in the fire.
And then finally it caught fire, it became a coal, it turned into a coal.
And then he jumped up back up.

Scene 2. Coyote returns downriver.

And he jumped back outdoors.
And he ran back downriver,
And when he got tired, then he gave the fire to the next person.
And that one too began to run.
And up in the mountains, where there had fires, then they all went out.
And then people said, “Why, they’ve taken it back, “our fire!”

Act III. Returning to the center of the world.

Scene 1. The runners.

And so the (upriver) people ran downhill.
And (Coyote’s) people ran down from upriver; one gave it to another, he gave it to the next.
Whenever a person got tired, he gave it to another one.
Finally they ran back here from upriver.
And they ran back here behind them, the upriver people did.
And so Turtle, where he sat at the end on a hilltop, then they gave it to him, the fire.

Scene 2. Turtle and Frog.

And so he began to roll, he rolled down to the river,
he rolled to a stop on the riverbank.
And there where Frog sat, then he gave it to her, the fire.
So they ran downhill just above her, the upriver people.
And then where did she go?
Frog was nowhere to be seen, where had she run to?
In fact she had dived into the river.
And suddenly, across river, then there was smoke, suddenly the dogs barked.
There humans had come into existence; dogs were howling.

http://www.ncidc.org/bright/karuk.html
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=kt1r29q2ct&doc.view=content&chunk.id=ch05&toc.depth=1&anchor.id=0&brand=eschol
"Traditional stories of related tribes like the Shasta and Yurok tribes are very similar."
http://www.native-languages.org/karok-legends.htm
http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/ca/ric/index.htm

Somewhere along the Klamath

Yes indeed, Ron’s photos of Sutter Buttes and other places in Northern California I’ve never been have really gotten my attention. It’s like taking everything you might read or see on Rock Piles and putting it on a landscape without second growth trees – without bittersweet and green briar! - that hide stone rows and everything else so that you can really stretch your eyes – and take photos that show the artifacts, the petroforms, so well .


And it’s a landscape that has had less time to be thoughtlessly destroyed than many places over here in the North East, cows and people doing so right now as I write this.

And Al Kroeber wrote ethnologies back there 100 years ago that Native People (who spoke Algonquin, sometimes called Delaware) are using to continue ancient traditions on that Sacred Landscape, visiting places that, now that I’ve seen Ron’s photos, look so familiar. If I haven’t seen it myself, I’ve seen it on Rock Piles. I see repeated patterns in the photographs – Georgia to Manitoba and now to Northern California.

Sure I read Kroeber (on a trip to Baja California) and highlighted all the rock and landscape ceremony references, but to actually see panoramas of the landscape is really something else.

I finally tickled Google with the phrase “Indian Stone Fence” and got a photo of a wall that looks like many I know in a number of places, along with a bit about “hunting blinds.” Digging around a little more I found recent recognition of the older culture, certain rocks recognized as culturally important– and Spiritually important as well. I found no reference to any farmers clearing any fields for agricultural uses, and recall that barbwire was begun to be produced around 1870.

Above is a photo Ron sent me this morning, as well as a detail (or 2) that looks like a photo that would’ve fit in quite well at the post http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2008/04/indian-look.html
and what I was trying to capture with this photo:

And what is that?

Turtle Specific

Peter Waksman photo from Massachusetts: 

http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2007/04/strolling-on-patch-hill-in-boxborough.html

As seen in turtle vision:

There's even a Loggerhead stink pot ( I once thought one was a snapper in the road so I grabbed him by his tail and the turtle let out his defense mechanism - the stink part) but below is the Common Variety:

 Ron Smith photo:

http://www.relicsoftheancients.com/KR053_Wide_mouth_rock_001_crop.jpg

Turtle on a turtle???

Species specific:

W. Pond turtle???

In my turtle vision, the small one climbs up, the extends his left fore leg back

to bask in the sun,  so he looks like the Stone in California...

Indian burning in Northern California

       "They stopped burning by Indians. The latest Indian burning in Northern California and Southern Oregon was in the 1940’s. When Henry Lewis did his 1973 study of the patterns of Indian burning in California, there were people living who remembered why they burned. Now their children, who are in their 60’s and 70’s, remember burning, but they don’t remember the control techniques or the objectives. So we may have lost that knowledge...If the elders were to come back now from the spirit world, they would look around and say, “There’s nobody taking care of this place.”

Dennis Martinez from http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/gtr63/gtrwo63g.pdf

Maidu Turtle (Anosma)

This photo is from a a bunch taken by Ron Smith in the Sutter Buttes area of California:

Native American Wiki-lore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutter_Buttes)

).

"The Sutter Buttes figure prominently in the creation stories and other traditions of the indigenous Maidu and Wintun peoples. The Maidu (or Nisenan) lived to the east of the Buttes and the Wintun (Patwin) to the mountain's west. No tribe claimed ownership of the Buttes and there are only season encampments in the mountain. Native Americans did visit the mountain regularly to gather acorns and other foods or to hunt game. The Buttes were also a center of regional Native American religion. According to anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, the Patwin village where the city of Colusa now stands was the “hotbed” where the Kuksu Cult was established. This religion spread through much of northern California. Ceremonies were performed in earthen dance lodges where spirit impersonators would re-enact ancient mythological events. The Maidu, who lived in their shadow for thousands of years, called them Esto Yamani, which means "the Middle Mountain", the Wintun called the Sutter Buttes Onolai. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutter_Buttes).

Ron also posts a map of other rocklines on Sutter Buttes: http://www.platosatlantis.com/sutter_buttes_rock_line_map.htm

I also found: “The Maidu people of California had a loose tribal organization with no visible expression of totemism. Their main occupation was hunting and gathering in a rich semi-forested area… The myth reported here has points of connection with the stories of the Wintum and Yana Indian groups located nearby in the Shasta and Pit River areas. The Algonquin, in the northeastern United States, have a creation myth that also speaks of an animal diving for earth, hence this was a widely distributed point of view on the North American Continent. Indian tribes in Southern California, however, sometimes spoke of God as thinking the world into existence from a void. So creation theories were also present. 

According to the Maidu:

In the beginning there was no sun, no moon, no stars. All was dark, and everywhere there was only water. A raft came floating on the water. It came from the North and in it were two persons -- Turtle (Anosma) and the Father-of-the-Secret-Society (Peheipe). [3] The stream flowed very rapidly. Then from the sky a rope of feathers (pokelma) was let down, and down it came the Earth-Initiate. When he reached the end of the rope, he tied it to the bow of the raft and stepped in. His face was covered and was never seen, but his body shone like the sun. He sat down and for a long time said nothing.

At last Turtle said, "Where do you come from?"

And Earth-Initiate answered, "I come from above."

Then Turtle said, "Brother can you not make for me some good dry land, so that I may sometimes come up out of the water?" Then he asked another time, "Are there going to be any people in the world?"

Earth-Initiate thought for a while, then said, "Yes."

Turtle asked, "How long before you are going to make people?"

Earth-Initiate replied, "I don't know. You want to have some dry land: well how am I going to get any earth to make it?"

Turtle answered, "If you will tie a rock about my left arm, I'll dive for some."

Earth-Initiate did as Turtle asked, and then, reaching around took the end of a rope from somewhere and tied it to Turtle. (When Earth-Initiate came to the raft, there was no rope there: he just reached out and found one.)

Turtle said, "If the rope is not long enough, I'll jerk it once, and you must haul me up; if it is long enough, I'll give two jerks, and then you must pull me up quickly as I shall have all the earth that I can carry."

Just as Turtle went over the side of the boat the Father-of-the-Secret-Society began to shout loudly.

Turtle was gone a long time. He was gone six years; and when he came up he was covered with green slime, he had been down so long. When he reached the top of the water the only earth he had was a very little under his nails: the rest had all washed away. Earth-Initiate took with his right hand a stone knife from under his left armpit and carefully scraped the earth out from under Turtle's nails. He put the earth in the palm of his hand and rolled it about till it was round; it was as large as a small pebble. He laid it in the stern of the raft. By and by he went to look at it: it had not grown at all. The third time he went to look at it, it had grown so that it could be spanned by the arms. The fourth time he looked, it was as big as the world, the raft was aground, and all around were mountains as far as he could see. The raft came ashore at Tádoiko, and the place can be seen today.

What shall we make of this story? It might be described as a creation narrative with Earth-Initiate as the creator figure. However, as already noted, it would be better to describe it as a formation story. There is the Father-of-the Secret-Society who shouts out loudly both here and later on at other key points in the story, which we have not been able to include here. There is a third figure, Turtle who announces that he wants a rock tied to his left arm before he goes over the side for six years to search for land to multiply. He manages to bring up a little bit from the bottom of the sea – so that the earth is primordial. Finally there is the mundane reality of Tádoiko, a place that you can see to this day if you know where to look (http://www.solaspress.com/mythch2.htm).”

Quoted from Roland B. Dixon, "Maidu Myths," Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, xvii 39 Pt. 2, (N.Y. June 30, l902) pp. 39-40

The Huntington Expedition first gathered Maidu stories in 1902 and published them in 1912 in the publication American Ethnological Society Ed. Frank Boaz.

A Maidu man, Maym Benner Galligher, recognized the voice of the speaker in the recordings as that of Tom Young (Hánc’ibyjim) the last of the great Maidu story tellers. See The Maidu Indian Myths and Stories of Hánc’ibyjim, Edited and Trans. William Shipley, Berkeley, Heyday Books 1991. Shipley’s book has a somewhat different Maidu origin story. In it two figures, Earthmaker and Coyote, are in a raft looking for earth in a world where there is only water. A small meadow lark’s nest came floating on the water. Under Earthmaker’s direction the nest is stretched in all four directions by Coyote until it is big enough to sustain Earthmaker and eventually all other animals. Note that in the Shipley and Dixon accounts more than one figure is required to form the world.

Harlem Plains NYC

Native American Village In Manhattan

Original caption: An Indian village of the Manhattans prior to th occupation of the Dutch. lithograph, 1858.  LOCATION: New York, New York, USA

IMAGE © Bettmann/CORBIS

William T. Bean and Eric W. Sanderson in 2007 wrote something called: "Using a spatially explicit ecological model to test scenarios of fire use by Native Americans: An example from the Harlem Plains, New York, NY. " Published in Ecological Modelling 211 (2008) pp. 301–308.

Full text here: Harlem Plains NYC

Why Mt. Shasta Erupted

or

"who should come along but Grandfather Turtle"

To this day, the Shasta Indian tribe likes to conclude this tale saying, "This is how volcanic eruptions began long, long ago on Mount Shasta," the whole story at Why Mt. Shasta Erupted.

Q: How long before I spotted a turtle at Ron’s rock lines?

A: Not very long. Ron’s photo:

http://www.platosatlantis.com/images/Rock%20lines/Rock%20lines_%20Barbed%20wire%20fences/20080831_20_DSC_0402.JPG

Detail plus photos stolen from San Diego Turtles & Tortises:

http://www.sdturtle.org/turtle_rescue.htm and
(And some Flickrs) http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3190/2965229297_2697b8d4c8.jpg

http://image53.webshots.com/53/7/73/30/2839773300086463701qyQVvh_ph.jpg

I hear the collective groan, but I think I see a resemblance.

I expect I’ll see big ones and little ones in the stone lines, as I go back to look at Ron’s excellent photos at
Rock Lines...

Forgotten Fires

Forgotten Fires: Native Americans and the transient wilderness
Omer Call Stewart, Henry T. Lewis, Kat Anderson
University of Oklahoma Press, 2002 - History - 364 pages

"A common stereotype about American Indians is that for centuries they lived in static harmony with nature, in a pristine wilderness that remained unchanged until European colonization. Omer C. Stewart was one of the first anthropologists to recognize that Native Americans made significant impact across a wide range of environments. Most important, they regularly used fire to manage plant communities and associated animal species through varied and localized habitat burning. In Forgotten Fires, editors Henry T. Lewis and M. Kat Anderson present Stewart's original research and insights, written in the 1950s yet still provocative today. Significant portions of Stewart's text have not been available until now, and Lewis and Anderson set Stewart's findings in the context of current knowledge about Native hunter-gatherers and their uses of fire."

Midwest Book Review:

"First presented in the 1950s, yet just as relevant today, Forgotten Fires: Native Americans And The Transient Wilderness by Omer C. Stewart dispels the longstanding cultural myth that Native American communities had no impact on the natural environment surrounding them. Taking a close look at the effects Native American civilization had upon nature's ability to incorporate them into the ecosystem, with an especial eye toward how some regularly used fires to manage plant and animal communities through localized habitat burning, Forgotten Fires is a thoughtful study about mankind's true interaction with the environment, presenting straightforward facts instead of romanticized legend. This highly recommended edition for Native American Studies and Environmental History reference shelves and reading lists has been collaboratively edited by Henry T. Lewis and M. Kat Anderson for the contemporary reader."

Google Books:  Forgotten Fires

Inkblot with Bear

Here's the photo I saw at Larry Harrop's site:

If this were the inkblot test, I'd tell you I see not one large turtle - with a very nice nutchal notch and marginal scutes- but two (perhaps mating?) turtles, but not limited to two because I see a stone with a pronounced v-shaped beak in there. But I also see a stone there that reminds me of a bear as well as a similar stone I know fairly well. Is there depression the size of a clam shell on top of this one in Rhode Island?

And, on the inkblot record, I'd say it wasn't evidence of somebody stacking stones for fence building or field clearing, but a carefully and artisticlly made petroform incorporating important cultural forms of the Wampanoag. Beyond the inkblot is a stone row as well. I think I see where it has been reworked into a gate, but I suspect more artistic forms can be found in it and that it perhaps was a fire break, wonder about it's boundaries and connection to other rows...

West Virginia Video

Read about it: http://www.wvgazettemail.com/Outdoors/200911140679

Watch at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNV8LDjA9N4

Serpent Thoughts (With Out Feathers)

The Horned Serpent vs The Feathered Serpent

After reading the newspaper story about Mike and the Serpent Stone he found in Woodbury (http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2010/05/woodbury-man-claims-to-have-found.html) and saying, “To read more about the serpent, and to see stone structures that resemble the "foot snake" read the Rock Piles Blog...), I thought I’d post some past links about the Horned Serpent of Turtle Island since I am Waking Up On Turtle Island once again. Open up some new windows with a right click on the links, so you don’t lose this page.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

“The Horned Serpent appears in the mythologies of many Native Americans.[1] Details vary among tribes, with many of the stories associating the mystical figure with water, rain, lightning and/or thunder. Horned Serpents were major components of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex of North American prehistory. [2][3]

The Horned Serpent was venerated, in various forms, by the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek, just to name a few. Some myths say it is invisible, or that it brought rain and made a noise similar to (but not the same as) thunder.[citation needed]

Among the Eastern and Western Cherokee Indians, the horned serpent known as Uktena was venerated. Anthropologist James Mooney, describes it thus:

"Those who know say the Uktena is a great snake, as large around as a tree trunk, with horns on its head, and a bright blazing crest like a diamond on its forehead, and scales glowing like sparks of fire. It has rings or spots of color along its whole length, and can not be wounded except by shooting in the seventh spot from the head, because under this spot are its heart and its life. The blazing diamond is called Ulun'suti -- "Transparent" -- and he who can win it may become the greatest wonder worker of the tribe. But it is worth a man's life to attempt it, for whoever is seen by the Uktena is so dazed by the bright light that he runs toward the snake instead of trying to escape. As if this were not enough, the breath of the Uktena is so pestilential, that no living creature can survive should they inhale the tiniest bit of the foul air expelled by the Uktena. Even to see the Uktena asleep is death, not to the hunter himself, but to his family."

According to Sioux belief, the Unktehila (Ųȟcéǧila) are dangerous reptilian water monsters that lived in old times. They were of various shapes. In the end the Thunderbirds destroyed them, except for small species like snakes and lizards. This belief may have been inspired by finds of dinosaur fossils in Sioux tribal territory. The Thunderbird may have been inspired partly by finds of pterosaur skeletons. [4]

Other known names

• Misi-kinepikw ("great snake") - Cree

• Msi-kinepikwa ("great snake") - Shawnee

• Misi-ginebig ("great snake") - Oji-Cree

• Mishi-ginebig ("great snake") - Ojibwe

• Pita-skog ("great snake") - Abenaki

• Sinti lapitta - Choctaw

• Unktehi or Unktehila - Dakota

External links

• Horned serpent, feathered serpent.

• Lakota creation myth involving Unktehi

• Native American Fossil Legends

• The Uktena And The Ulûñsû'tï

Horned-Serpent-SanRafaelSwell-Utah-100_1933.jpg‎ (800 × 450 pixels, file size: 157 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)


And then there's Wiki's link to: http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/cher/motc/motc050.htm, "The Uktena And The Ulûñsû'tï," the latter "...a bright, blazing crest like a diamond upon its forehead..."

The most famous Horned Serpent?

Great Serpent Mound, Ohio

The following passage has been adapted to modern usage from an account given by Tuscaroran Chief Elias Johnson.

“A Great Horned Serpent also next appeared on Lake Ontario who, by means of his poisonous breath, caused disease, and caused the death of many.
http://cosmictusk.com/e-p-grodines-compilation-of-first-peoples-accounts-of-the-yd-impacts

I found and posted these:

http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2009/10/snake-legend.html (of Naugatuck CT), http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2009/10/foot-snake.html

Stones and Serpents

I really do believe Mike’s stone is a Native American creation, the foot snake a cultural motif. Next time I see him I’ll ask about the stone wall business. Some people insist that certain “stone concentrations” actually recall the Serpent as a “wall,” perhaps better described as a petroform. Some great photos can be found at, like the entry for 9/1/ 2009 at Ceremonial Landscapes:

http://www.ceremonial-landscapes.com/blog/index.php?/archives/P7.html

http://www.ceremonial-landscapes.com/blog/index.php?/archives/P4.html, if you scroll down to “The serpent wall.”

My friend Peter was moved to make a Christmas post at his Rock Piles Blog:

http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2009/12/merry-christmas.html


On the more serious side: http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2008/05/uktena-horned-creature-with-diamond.html


And I’m sure if you search his site, you’ll find lots more.

• I’ll leave you with these from a series of posts, probably best read from oldest post to newest: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html

CT Archaeology Center

What can I do to protect archaeological resources located on my property?


Good stewardship begins with responsible actions. Native American sites can be very old, very fragile, and offer significant insights about the distant past. If you discover Native American artifacts, contact the Office of State Archaeology for appropriate guidance.

If you occasionally find broken bits of early ceramics or other colonial artifacts while gardening or landscaping, develop a system for recording or cataloging where these discoveries occurred. Draw a map of your property and describe where and how each find was discovered. This information will help future property owners, historians and archaeologists better understand the property's changing history and use through time. However, if you discover a buried foundation or a dense concentration of historic artifacts on your property, seek the professional assistance of the Office of State Archaeology.

Where can I donate my collection of artifacts?

The Museum of Natural History/Connecticut Archaeology Center is the official state repository for archaeological artifacts from Connecticut, and we are always interested in pre-historic and historic materials that will increase understanding of the past. If you have materials you think might benefit this effort, and are looking for a safe, pemanent home for them, please contact our Collection Manager, Cheri Collins, and we will be pleased to consider them.
 
CT Archaeology Center

old stone walls

WNPR news article (with audio, a photo and a Flickr link) that states, “New England has miles upon miles of old stone walls on its landscape…”

http://www.cpbn.org/farmland-stone-coveted-suburbanites

 

Stone wall dividing a pasture: Photo by Lucy Napathanchil, WNPR

For more photos, visit our Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wnprimages/sets/72157603335631488/show/

More Spring Cleaning

UConn Powwow

Flanders Nature Center Video

Flanders Nature Center again, trying to capture some testudinate forms in stone rows, highlighting some very striking stones...

Spring Cleaning in the Chickenyard

     Yes, I still continue the work started by those chicken acheologists of yesteryear, picking and pecking away around these stone mounds. Here's a photo from the summer of 2006:

 Older Chicken Yard Posts:

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2006/07/great-moments-scan-from-sketchpad.html

 (Chickens uncovered the first turtle...)

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2006/07/july-18.html

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2006/07/lucky-day.html (Second turtle discovery...)

A new (shaky sort of ) video: