The Curious Case of Doctor Hives’ Parsimonious Razor Stones

 Wherein Sherlock Stones and Doctor Possum find evidence of field clearing (finally) at a Hilltop Farm

  Touring the early April woods on top of ______’s Hill, astounded by the vast amount of Indigenous Stonework, Sherlock Stones paused on the trail by the gateway into “FIELD,” as it was marked on the map. Retired Rocket Surgeon Dr. John Possum, his associate consultant partner and longtime friend exclaimed, “Just look at the details in the stacking of that so-called ‘Stone Wall!’”

   Sherlock Stones laughed as Possum began photo-documenting “turtle after turtle” and “snake over snake over snake over snake.” 

"With all the trees and brush, it's difficult to get a good capture," Possum was saying.. 

    The "Stone Wall Detective" stepped up closer to the Ceremonial Stone Landscape feature and said, “If you want some details, look here on top of our alleged aesthetic farm maintenance sheep fence and linear trash heap, my good Possum. One might find this an interesting small detail resting on top.”

   Possum chuckled, moving closer with the camera, remarking, “A small Manitou Stone! ‘Hidden in Plain Sight,’ as they say!”

   Sherlock Stones considered a moment and then said, “One can’t rule out the stone tool aspect of this one. Wear from usage, under close examination, might reveal that the stone rests on the working edge. It could be ground smooth from work as a “Muller Stone” as I like to call them, ground smooth processing some kind of plant material.”

   “Or battered from usage as a hammer stone,” Possum interjected. “It’s entirely possible that we aren’t all that far from  ‘Hatchet Harbour’ where the Regicide Judges hid out in the ‘wilderness’ around New Haven. The name comes from one of them saying “If only we had a hatchet!” and then finding an Indian stone hand axe ‘at their feet.”

   “Or perhaps on a similar sort of stone construction,” Sherlock Stones remarked. “We shall never know for certain.” He turned and headed for the gateway into the ‘FIELD.’

   “I say Sherlock!” Possum called to his friend. “You aren’t going to bother to look?”

   Sherlock laughed, “You yourself just called it a Manitou Stone as your first impression! I’m not about to disturb someone’s possible Stone Prayer, pointing upward and a little westward.” He pointed to a stone in the gateway, “I’d no sooner think of moving that much larger “head and shoulders” sort of Manitou Stone right there!”

   “Leave it to an atheist to respect what the religious consider pagan superstition,” Possum remarked.

    Possum quickened his pace to catch up with his friend and associate who was already a third of the way across the meadow. “This is what I remember of my childhood, passing through fields such as these, all too quickly disappearing,” Sherlock stones was saying. “The name of that kind of grass is on the tip of my tongue, introduced by the English, if I recall correctly.”

Looking Northeast from by the gateway into the FIELD,

an undulating probable Snake Effigy

  “Look at the contours, the sort of mounding or something, of the FIELD,” the doctor said, looking up the hillside from the path that stretched along parallel to the stone bordered roadside. “Is it “mounded” on purpose like contour plowing or is it something else?”

      By now Sherlock had stopped by another gateway, behind the ‘colonial foundation’ and the small house lot site between them and the old stone bound trail that had become the road, said to be named for the occupant of the now long gone house. Possum‘s attention was taken by the distinct multiple rows of stones. He said, “Well this to the right appears to be one of those trails assumed to be a “cow path” or a “cart path,” but composed as it is with obvious Indigenous Iconography, I’m going to assume it’s ancient and appropriated. It’s these other rows of stones that puzzle me. They seem to be unceremoniously, but rather neatly laid out in long lines at this edge of the field.”

    “Path of least resistance?” Sherlock pondered. “All downslope of the hill top, but gently angled…”

    “For Goodness Sakes!” Possum chuckled. “Here’s us finding and looking at Dr. Timothy Hives’ Hilltop Farm Clearing hypothesis – but in reverse, as that other Timothy McSomething-Or-Other claims!”

    "Well," Sherlock mused, "Like many others, Hives is recalling Eric Sloane and imagined "stoning bees" such as Sloane conjectured from a certain "Nothing Happened Here Before 1620" point of view, sometime in the 1950s. You might recall the drawing:"

   “If we are in an area of a great concentration of Ceremonial Stone Landscape features, where one cannot ‘swing a cat’ without risking serious injury to the cat on a stone feature, then we may well be looking right at evidence of his ‘Fellow Tim’s’ alleged delusion – as Hives calls it in his non-archaeological ad hominem attack masquerading as a "book" about the so-called (Disco Music Loving) Ceremonial Stone Landscape Movement.”

Timothy McFellow's 'Opposing Hypothesis' drawing,

 clearly plagiarizing Eric Sloane

   “Are these rows of stones sorted by size?’ Possum was asking. “Is this a stockpile of stones for sale? Would this colonial foundation and long gone home owner be the family member who became a stone mason, an architect in New Haven, and a later quarry owner? Here’s marks related to breaking stone with blasting powder! Is this a hand axe? Is that a –“

   But Sherlock Stones was headed toward more “heaps of stones,” those “rock piles” said to be stacked as reserves for stone fence building. Some appeared to be built on the ground while others rested on boulder. Stopping at a suspected glacial erratic with just one or two stones perched on it, Sherlock called out, “Look here Possum! Here on this boulder: a Cubist Turtle Effigy, one might say…”

Note: Dr Possum sends these images to me later this morning, so I include them here now:

"Looking toward the 'Stockpile' from way up above, at perhaps a modified segment of a row of stones," Dr. Possum writes: "A modification for wooden rails - a "bar way?" An Indigenous laborer's modification that doesn't compromise the Serpent Stacking? These are not far from contact era Indigenous settlements, known Paugussett settlements such as Chuse Town and others..."

 

Obvious Things

 

 “The Massachusetts landscape is full of obvious Indigenous created Stone Great Snake Beings which almost nobody by any chance ever observes.” –Sherlock Stones *

   The fog was thick, the ground muddy, and Sherlock Stones was indoors in his computer chair that morning, clicking through old photos from a digital archive from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It was early on in the New Year, as well as early on in the day, when Dr. John Possum looked in on his Ceremonial Stone Landscape research partner.

   “Possum,” Sherlock Stones said without moving his eyes from the large computer screen, “The Massachusetts landscape one finds recorded in these old images is full of obvious Indigenous created Stone Great Snake Beings which almost nobody by any chance ever observes.”

  “Is that so?” Possum replied. “You’ll have to show me just what you mean, knowing the present stance of total denial the MA Historic Commission takes when it comes to the Indigenous CSL issue.”

  Sherlock Stones pulled up one of the digital images and said, “Here’s a good example right here:”

Fields image

  Dr. Possum looked a moment, then removed his reading glasses and began polishing the lenses. “My dear Sherlock,” he said, “I’m not quite sure what you mean with this one. This looks typical of almost any “stone wall” in the region, hardly anything that stands out as “remarkable” in any sense.” Possum put his spectacles back on and peered at the big screen again.

    “You see, but you do not observe,” Stones remarked. “But you are not alone. And besides I have hope for you yet. Take note of the size of the image and then the enlargement feature. You’ll note a little “Whoops” in the otherwise fairly uniform level height of this particular Suspect Row of Stones.”

   “Suspect Row of Stones?” Possum repeated his associate’s phrase, capital letters and all.

   “Every so-called “stone wall” or assumed “stone fence” should be suspect when it comes to proper identification,” Stones replied. “This whole “Farmer Wall vs Indian Wall” is rife with problems, all the misinformation that often goes unchallenged when it comes to – ah here you go, Possum!”

   The enlargement finally loaded (Sherlock Stones uses an older laptop, its power cord duct taped into place, which uses an operating system that was considered “quaint” about  20 years ago):  

  “One begins to detect the presence of effigies in the stonework, “eyes” on certain boulders of a certain rattlesnake snake head shape, a “singing stone” with an open mouth, and several possible, or probable, turtles that one associates with Indigenous Iconography or “art” found in other media.”

   “Perhaps, Sherlock, perhaps,” Possum concurred, “But really nothing that strikes me as obvious and unmistakable - nothing "jumps out at me," as they say.”

  With another mouse click, a different image appeared on the screen, a winter scene that included a section of “stone wall” and a farm building of some sort.

  “This one should be obvious to you,” Stones was saying as he sat back in his battered computer chair. “You will recall the Curious Case of the Preacher's Gateway, where one can observe a pair of Stone Serpents guarding the entrance to an enclosure, one of them with an obvious white eye which needed no overlay to add as it was already apparent on the chosen and placed stone “head stone.”

    "The only thing more deceptive than one obvious snake effigy is two obvious snake effigies, eh?" Possum replied.

   "While one effigy is possibly nothing, two similar such effigies may be a coincidence, but add a third, such as this one, and we seem to have an Obvious Snake Effigy Conspiracy before our collective eyes, Possum" Sherlock Stones stated. "Observe: Head turned to the side, Uktena-like, followed by a sinuous serpentine twisty body stretching out behind..." 

   Sherlock caught the sideways glance of the good doctor, a retired Rocket Surgeon. “Cease to merely see and allow yourself to observe, my dear Possum; there also seems to be an indication of an eye on that prominent boulder where the row of stones – or Snake Effigy – begins.”

  “Well, I can’t argue that,” Possum remarked. “I’d have to repeat something like “Indians around here didn’t do that” or something to that effect, a phrase I don’t find all that reliable.” He paused and then added, “Seems remarkable that no one ever noticed this before.”

   “Consider the times and the fencing of the day when this became private property, a farm, in the area.” Stones began clicking away at images and imported them into a single image in an old (free) program most people would be embarrassed to be using. ”Wooden fences were the fence of choice in those days, easily constructed of an abundant material at that early date, an instrument of the early laws of property acquisition and “improvement” to the landscape  the Puritans were trying to portray as Vacant Wilderness. The Indian made Effigy is not only discounted as a possible fence or enclosure but also “covered up as Indigenous,” so to speak, with the fencing required by the colony’s law.”  

 “Hidden in Plain Sight,” as they say,” Possum mumbled.

   “Indeed,” remarked Sherlock Stones, “Our Hidden Landscapes," ** hidden figuratively, literally, and even legally.”

  *“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.” - Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle)

 ** Preview on Google Books (101/458 pages available): "Challenging traditional and long-standing understandings, this volume provides an important new lens for interpreting stone structures that had previously been attributed to settler colonialism. Instead, the contributors to this volume argue that these locations are sacred Indigenous sites..." 

https://books.google.com/books/about/Our_Hidden_Landscapes.html?id=5-HWEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

THE STRANGE CASE of the STONE WALL Made of STONE LACE

 "What the Hell!!" Walls

Dr. John Possum chuckled, turned toward his longtime associate Sherlock Stones seated in his armchair beside him, and said, “Here’s this one popping up again on my laptop screen. “The Dreaded Bladed Lace Wall,” Possum announced as he turned the device so that Sherlock could see.

   “Ah! Those so-called “Lace Walls,” replied Stones. “Named for a stacking technique in Ireland allegedly inspired by a needlework cultural tradition known as “Irish Lace.” The technique led to speculation about Celtic monks settling around the NEW England area, but both also resemble some lacy looking yak fences in the Himalayas but so far no one has speculated about ancient Tibetan monks traveling the seven seas to bring this sort of artistically and culturally stacked stonework to either Ireland or America – or both!”

   “I’d forgotten that he also calls them “What the Hell Walls!” Possum replied in minor amusement and began to read:

    “INTERPRETATION: Colloquially, this is known as a lace wall, though it’s a very unusual one because this shape stacks so easily to minimize pore space..."

 (Under his breath, Sherlock Stones muttered, "A geologic metaphor, an analogy of sorts, the term relates to the porous space between the mineral grains of deep rock formations.") 

   "...Most lace walls are made of rounded ball-shaped stones which require high porosity and stones not bearing weight are very unstable.  Now, having described it with a nomenclature and classified with with (sic) a taxonomy, we can  speculate on why.  This wall makes no sense as a “linear landfill” for field clearing. It might have been a fence, but seem (sic: but it seems?) too low.  It could have been a border to a field or farm.  So, let’s call it an unexplained anomaly, perhaps an idiosyncratic, “what the hell,” folk art expression of some sort, likely built from locally quarried stone on bedrock.  A reconnaissance of the terrain would  provide other clues. But for now, let’s just call it a “Bladed Lace Wall,” writes Professor Thorson.”

   Sherlock Stones  shook his head and said, “Despite being aware that humans were living in North America since at least 20,000 years ago, when the Laurentide Ice Sheet was beginning to recede from New England?” Sherlock Stones replied, “He writes somewhere that, and I quote, “Some aspects of the stone domain (piles, rings, notable stones, short sections of stacked stone) were part of indigenous material culture as dolmens and cairns. The trick is to differentiate these "needles" in a haystack from the "hay" of the nearly ubiquitous Euro-settlement overprint.”

  “Dolmens and cairns?” exclaimed Dr. Possum. “Right back to Ireland, eh Stones??”

   “One immediately begins to suspect the credibility of anyone claiming that ‘dolmens’ were part of the material culture of any Indigenous Peoples anywhere, or at any time, in the entire western hemisphere. One wonders which stone structures the professor of geology is talking about – or which consulting anthropologist suggested such a thing to him,” Sherlock Stones pondered. “You have a people here in this little corner of the continent, repeating these  statements of the Puritans and other early settler colonists about wandering nomadic Indians who were too lazy or too “savage,”  - “too unintelligent to actually place one stone on top of the other,” as some have insisted, in print and in public lecture - despite all evidence of similar stone structures on Turtle Island and in the rest of the world, for that matter.”

   “The Colonial Myth again,” said Possum. “Here’s another post with a link to a Stone Wall Manual. Here he writes, “New England walls built by European settlers range begin with the year 1607 from the Popham colony in south-coastal Maine…”

    “Actually, the only mention of any “stone wall” building in 1607 is that a well was “walled up” – lined with stones. Part of why a “stone fence” has become known as a “stone wall. A drawing of the plantation and fort exists, showing massive walls of stone but on paper and on the ground the fortifications were basket like, dirt and stone filled more easily built gabions,” Stones interrupted. "It's "Tabla Rasa" all over again, sweeping the Indian off the slate to create a colonialistic history, these days turning more and more toward a Nationalistic mythology." 

     The doctor continued reading, “In later coastal settlements the earliest stone features date to the year of arrival in the first half of the 17th century because primitive wharves and piers and sea walls were essential.  The famous erratic known as Plymouth rock, dating to 1620, is a notable stone, in this case an erratic that was moved and imprisoned below the modern wharf.  Features on rural New England properties inland from the sea are typically younger than Metacom's war of 1675-1676 and are restricted to major settlement pathways like the Connecticut River Valley.  The Concord River Valley, MA, dating to 1635, is a notable exception.”

 

Sherlock: The sites of the very first European settler colonist villages were on the sites of Indigenous Villages and the first agricultural fields had been worked by "Indians" for longer  and occupied more permanently than is commonly understood before the greatest depopulation of a people, throughout the NEW England region and beyond." 

   “It speaks to a very misunderstood picture of the cultural landscape of Indigenous Peoples, particularly here along this side, the Connecticut side, of the  Long Island Sound, described by some very early European voyagers, often called Explorers or Discoverers, as a thickly populated place. Verrazano and Smith, as well as others, describe fields and meadows, gardens and forests, village nestled into village, “cheek to jaw,” on the landscape. Missing is a picture of a subsistence method that has no good name, is minimally understood, or something like that I believe Kathleen Bragdon writes somewhere, yet written in the evidence of “stone walls” that in some instances create fuel breaks for managing small parcels of land by thermal pruning, if one can get past the colonialistic myth that surrounds the subject of these Yankee stone walls,” Sherlock Stones said. “Double rows surrounding the roads called pathways as even more “fire insurance,” one could say – roads that also served in part as game drives in certain locations…”

  “Fish Weirs in the water, retaining rows of stones forming causeways over and along the water features,” interjected Possum. “The professor gives a nod to “short sections of stacked stones,” perhaps meaning a Serpent or Big Snake Effigy but perhaps not, but any “longer than short” rows of culturally stacked or laid stones just has to be attributable to the “superior culture” of early European settler colonists – for no good reason other than that’s the myth, the Pristine Myth, the Exceptional Yankee Myth, the folklore that has almost never been scientifically investigated standing in its place.”

   “A Colonialist Archaeology, as Dr. Trigger called it years ago,” said Sherlock Stones. “Turning not merely Nationalistic, but frighteningly Ultra-Nationalistic if one looks at what is currently going on within the United Staes of America these days.” Sherlock sighed and fell silent for a moment. “Many well-meaning researchers who focus on Indigenous Stonework have difficulty “decolonizing” when it comes to these so-called “Stone Walls.” Some will casually dismiss miles and miles of “zigzag stone walls” or rectangular enclosures with right angles as colonial or later “farmer walls,” while yet another will claim to see many variations of an Indigenous stacking method that intentionally includes creation of effigies, the inclusion of Indigenous Iconography if you will.”

    “I recall that old trail along that brook, right on the edge of the city,” said Possum. “We walked up one side on an elevated trail, a causeway, above the good sized stream that contained Indigenous Iconography seen in other stone structures. We soon found ourselves looking the very different stonework related to a railroad across the stony canyon  from the Old Path, used to bring the first dressed grindstone into the area.”

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2018/05/well-defined-trails-to-mattatuck.html

   “Quite dramatic to those interested in such things,” Stones replied. “Just as the “What the Hell Wall” might be to the serious student of the long history of Turtle Island.”

   Sherlock Stones plucked a printout from the middle of a stack of papers.

   “Here you go, Doctor Possum, one for your blog:”

More Sherlock Stones:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=sherlock

 

My own personal note about major settlement pathways and stone features etc.

Colonial -   New England walls built by settlers range begin with the year 1607 from the Popham colony in south-coastal Maine.  In later coastal settlements the earliest stone features date to the year of arrival in the first half of the 17th century because primitive wharves and piers and sea walls were essential.  The famous erratic known as Plymouth rock, dating to 1620, is a notable stone, in this case an erratic that was moved and imprisoned below the modern wharf.  Features on rural New England properties inland from the sea are typically younger than Metacom's war of 1675-1676 and are restricted to major settlement pathways like the Connecticut River Valley.  The Concord River Valley, MA, dating to 1635, is a notable exception.”

Not At My House:   

   I’ll repeat Thorson’s sentence: “Features on rural New England properties inland from the sea are typically younger than Metacom's war of 1675-1676.”

   And I’ll repeat the sentence I often use: “Not at my house.”

   I live in a house of undocumented age (unless you count the earliest of Treaties negotiated by John Minor) built on a foundation composed of “snakes and turtles,” the “Indian Road” that is sometimes called the Old Connecticut Path, by the site of an Indian village, the Nonnewaug Wigwams, most often described as a “camp” in most local histories, a road that followed migration patterns of mega-fauna and facilitated trade, that eventually connected to other villages and other (sometimes rectangular) “resource zones,” such as “wetland gardens” where food and medicine grew or Forest Gardens of Chestnut and Oak, rectangular fields of blueberries separated but also connected by low zigzag rows of stones, so that three fields continue to produce for every one that is burned over on a four year schedule. It’s not “burning down forests to clear land,” but more like a way most easily maintain small “garden enclosures” – with a stone fuel break so you don’t burn up your neighbors’ enclosures accidently. The spiritual protection of a Great Serpent or Big Snake adds to the power of these “Stone Prayers,” as I understand it.   

  One more place where an abundance of “Indian Stonework” has been disappearing for centuries.

  Nonnewaug in Pootatuck, as some still call it, where I woke up on Turtle Island…

Dawn Spear's painting "As it as Before" and a Chaplain Drawing:

Adding rows of culturally stacked stones:

Sherlock Stones and the Key to the Language of Roger Williams

 Sôtay yo kisk, nupito yoht cukánuk:

                     Sunday today. I put fire in the pasture.

 “It’s the stone walls that puzzle me,” Dr. John Possum, the retired rocket surgeon, was saying to his friend and associate independent researcher Sherlock Stones. “If they were so present as some contend, then why no mention by Roger Williams in his Key to the Language of America?” “The English denoted property boundaries with walls, among other reasons for usage. So, if so many walls were already here, how could Williams not only fail to mention them, but one would think he would want to know “why all the walls?”

 

  “Fences, Possum, not ‘walls.’ The English, one could say, “denoted property boundaries” with fences of wooden rails. The first rails went up around their acquired communal planting fields, allegedly removing stones from soil previously worked by generations of Indigenous women and tossing those stones at or under those rail fences. The purpose of those wooden barriers went up around garden plots to prohibit those imported domesticated animals from destroying corn or wheat or peas, but it was not too much later that settler colonists began the practice of enclosing their “bounds” as a matter of a property law, drawn up by the settler colonists, a tangible and visual sign of an improvement of said property, about four or five feet in height, ‘Horse High and Oxen Strong and Pig Tight’ and all that, as the romantic language of Colonial History puts it. But still, it’s a perfectly good question,” replied Sherlock Stones. “But first we must consider the language of the times.  In the early 1600s in English eyes, to English ears, “stone walls” more likely meant the defensive stone walls of a castle or a fortress rather than what most people today think of as “stone walls.” I’m not quite sure at what point in the curious history of the modern American English language when the expression “stone wall” replaced “stone fence,” any more than do I know the cultural origin of those cross and rail fences or those zigzag rail Snake or Worm Fences one sees show up in the beginning of virtually every stone wall book ever written. The Wattle and Daub fence one sees in the gardens of re-created Colonial English Plantations (or in the plans of Fort Pohham) is clearly a European creation in use both here and in Europe, and only occasionally does one see a writer imply that these early colonial wooden constructions enclosing corn or wheat fields may have a had a “Native American Hunting Fence” origin, such as Champlain wrote about and had illustrated in several forms. One version shows what greatly resembles a picket fence, just to ensure that the European audience interprets it as a fence, despite the inaccuracy of the engraving.”

  Dr. Possum opened up a well-worn dog-eared print copy of William’s Key and read aloud:

  “The Natives are very exact and punctuall in the bounds of their Lands, belonging to this or that Prince or People, (even to a River, Brooke) &c. And I have knowne them make bargaine and sale amongst themselves for a small piece, or quantity of Ground: notwithstanding a sinfull opinion amongst many that Christians have right to {Heathens} Lands: but of the delusion of that phrase, I have spoke in a discourse concerning the {Indians} Conversion.

   When a field is to be broken up, they have a very loving sociable speedy way to dispatch it: All the neighbours men and Women forty, fifty, a hundred &c, joyne, and come in to help freely.

   With friendly joyning they breake up their fields, build their Forts, hunt the Woods, stop and kill fish in the Rivers, it being true with them as in all the World in the Affaires of Earth or Heaven: By concord little things grow great, by discord the greatest come to nothing…”

    “Ah - The Bounds,” Sherlock sighed, “An expression that gives us, modernly, the term “boundaries,” more or less in the same way that the word “fence” itself is derived from “defense” or “defensive barriers,” one could say. Williams seems to be writing about the bounds of small parcels of land, filled with the flora and fauna he meticulously lists, that fed the Indigenous Peoples, the resource zones of the seasonal round the serious student hears so much about, the gathering part of hunting and gathering that some anthropologists say supplied so much food (for humans and the animals hunted) that the introduction of maize into the region was almost a “non-event.”

     Dr. Possum frowned at the text and said, “Well here’s this reference to “stop and kill fish in the Rivers.” By “stop” does Williams mean to pause beside a river and catch fish or is he implying that the Native Americans could and would build and maintain the dam-like fish traps known as weirs??” He pointed to Sherlock Stone’s huge map of place names he had painted on one of the walls of the room they were in. “There’s quite a few ‘fishing places’ to be found, some with a fragment of the words for stone in them.”

 

   “Peculiar how a stone wall-like structure in a river or stream seems to be feat Indians were very capable of designing, building, using, and maintaining for century after century, often recorded as gathering places in which to celebrate the return of a certain migrating fish, species such the Salmon or Shad or Eels in yearly festival-like celebrations but once one reaches dry land, the concept of Indians building permanent masonry structures here flies out the window, despite examples of Indigenous stonework structures to be found in the arid American Southwest or in the rain forests of Amazonia.”

   “It’s as if,” Possum mused, “the area now known as Southern New England was the only place in the world where people so generously supplied with both ordinary and exotic stones, transported and dropped room service style by glaciers, never stacked one stone on top of the other." 

   “One might attempt to build a case that any Indigenous person who could not stack one stone on a top of another was exiled to the Connecticut or Rhode Island Shoreline, walked the ancient trade route highways to the area, to happily live with others like them, perhaps patiently or perhaps anxiously waiting for the Europeans to sail in a teach them how to stack stones,” Sherlock said.

(Is the above map is actually of present-day Biddeford ME?)

    Possum turned his gaze toward another wall where Sherlock Stones had painted reproductions of several of the old drawing like maps that had been made after the earliest of European voyages, based observations by Giovanni Verrazzano, John Smith, and Samuel de Champlain, peppered with quotes from the explores about villages packed “check to jowl’ on the landscape, cornfields “fathoms” in extent, a place too crowded with Indigenous Peoples to provide suitable space for English colonial settlements. The Doctor noted the places where his compatriot had painted in low rows of stones with snake heads at their beginnings, quite resembling the LiDar images other researchers attributed to settler colonist farmsteads, enclosures sometimes regular and rectangular but sometimes quite irregular like shapes on a crazy quilt.

   Sherlock Stones struck a match and as he lit his pipe said, “Now there is also that Burning Question to consider: all those references about the thermal pruning of the landscape, the often-mentioned fires set by Indians that to this day remains very much understudied and very much poorly understood.” Stones picked up one of his tablets and stabbed at it with his forefinger. He read aloud, “When I argued with them about their Fire-God [Yotáanit]: can it, say they, be but this fire must be a God, or Divine power, that out of a stone will arise in a Sparke, and when a poore naked Indian is ready to starve with cold in the House, and especially in the Woods, often saves his life, doth dresse all our Food for us, and if he be angry will burne the House about us, yea if a spark fall into the drie wood, burnes up the Country ? (though this burning of the Wood to them they count a Benefit, both for destroying of vermin, and keeping down the Weeds and thickets)”. (A Key, p. 125)” He touched the screen again and read, “Sôtay yo kisk, nupito yoht cukánuk,” which seems to translate to: ‘Sunday today. I put fire in the pasture.’”

 

  “So,” said Possum, “A field of some sort of grass, in a thickly populated place, was “burned over” for some purpose, no mention of how the fire was prevented from spreading, just as the burning over of hunting lands is tossed out by Williams in the argument about Indigenous ownership of the lands with powerful Puritan leaders of the time, their bounds, beyond the agricultural gardens Indian people used and maintained, without mention of a "too low to be a barrier to domesticated animals imported from Europe" row of culturally stacked stones as a hearth-like fuel break such as the notorious Timothy “Eyes and Antlers” McSweeney claims to observe in Woodbury Connecticut, by a village site where the Indigenous “stone wall-like structures” resemble the Big Snake Spirit that controlled weather, guarded “Indian Gardens” of many kinds, and importantly, put out the fires set by the lightning from Thunder Birds/Beings eyes as the two battled, creating the sounds of thunder and the flashing of lightning.”

 

  “It’s Tim, not Timothy – and Mac, not Mc,” Sherlock responded, “And I am not sure why this contact era village is not of more interest to either professional or avocational “true believers” and skeptics of Ceremonial Stone Landscapes alike. That pervading cloud of Colonialistic or Nationalistic attitude that ‘nothing much happened here before 1620,’ obscures and often ridicules observations of Indigenous stonework that continues to disappear more every day, buried by leaves or carelessly destroyed by machinery, washed away with flooding and often rebuilt in a style foreign to the disappearing Nonnewaug Cultural Landscape.”

  “It is a unique place, indeed,” Watson mused. “Most CSL researchers are looking at "remote" upland hunting grounds that may also be considered Sacred and Ceremonial Grounds while here is a village site which isn’t as completely buried beneath the modern cities of Providence RI or Plymouth MA, or the Village of Mattatuck that became Waterbury CT, or the village where Sachem Pomperaug had once lived, just five miles south on the Indian Path, that became present day Woodbury CT.”

   I compee agreetly,” said Sherlock with a wink of his eye. “All these places, connected by roadways bordered with remnants of zigzag rows of culturally stacked stones as well as linear rows of stones that undulate like a giant snake on the landscape, the occasional Algonquian dialect place name still in use need a second and third look at without remaining under the shadows of a Colonialistic or Nationalistic Archaeology.”

"Do you know why most investigators fail? They refuse to extend their basic knowledge beyond the bounds of basic investigative procedure. It is the mark of the mediocre investigator who fails to use the informed imagination part of science that has in the past led to the greatest of discoveries."

 ~ Sherlock Stones

Which came first, the boulder or the wall?

From the Case Book of Sherlock Stones

(All photo credits go to John Martin ~ https://www.facebook.com/Strong-Wind-Photography-by-John-A-Martin-1602232716687052/ - with overlays on the same by myself and my consultant Sherlock Stones)

      Consider for a moment this photo below, posted on a Social Media page that is a sort of discussion group for what is defined as Ceremonial Stone Landscapes:

      Actually, it is only one photo of two posted photos, which were accompanied by the photographer’s words, “2 different turtles in a wall? Looks like it to me.”

Here’s the second:

     Having been interested in this sort of thing – the idea that Indigenous People of Turtle Island, as they called it, created stone constructions well before 1492 – for long enough to be considered a “crack pot” by all but a tiny number of archaeologists as well as friends and family members, I offered up the opinion that perhaps this wall is a Great Serpent Petroform (or Geoglyph), offering up my own desecration of the original photos to emphasize the opinion:

(I interpret the second as “slit-eyed” and “dreaming,” an idea once suggested to me by a rock art expert.)

       Checking in with my associate Sherlock Stones, I show him the photos, let him know that various people have made some observations about this stone wall, postulated that it may be Indigenous in origin etcetera, as well as shared with him a site drawing (little knowing I was at the wrong site and off by 20 miles) made by the man who took the photographs and who offered the interpretation that some boulders incorporated into the wall may be effigies representing Turtle Heads that I contend may rather be Serpent Heads in a representation of one of many Great Serpents, since there is an absence of anything resembling a carapace - or feet.

       I expect some validation in the form of praise for my observations, but Stones merely shrugs, reaching for his pouch and pipe. A silent moment passes.

        "Stones!" I exclaim, "The boulders may indeed suggest the zoomorphic, probably reptilian I'd wager, but observe the smaller stones (he gives me a brief sharp look as I say that) - er, the shape of those cobbles I mean  - used around it, indeed much like the lozenge-shaped scales of a rattlesnake!"

       I place another photo on the low table between us:

      “Why can’t they be both?” Sherlock asks, shrugging his shoulders. “Surely you know these Indigenous Native American Great Serpents are notorious shape-shifters. Do you know the Indian legend of the turtle who shape-shifts into a Great Serpent?”

      “No, I don’t,” I admit - and then ask, “How does it go?”

      “I haven’t the foggiest,” Stones replies. “I’m not an expert on Lenni Lenape legends, but that doesn’t mean such a story never existed. Perhaps it’s recorded or perhaps not. In fact, that story may be recorded in the stonework of this very stonewall! Consider it a homework assignment! Whatever the outcome, it is still a possibility!”

      As he lights his pipe, I change the subject a little, tell him that someone, a stone mason who lives down by the CT shore but originally from England coincidentally, has asked the question, “Which came first, the boulder or the stone wall?” Sherlock tells me further observations are necessary in order to answer that. “We can’t assume that the boulder rests on soil, although that is one possibility. Observe the photo that shows three large boulders of similar size about equal distance apart incorporated into that row-like concentration of stones (as he says this he circles them, unasked, in yellow on the printed out page), hardly a natural occurrence and a coincidence? I think not!!” Stones goes on to say, “A careful excavation by a qualified Archaeologist, samples taken from below the bouldersand analyzed  may reveal which is true of a number of possibilities: These boulders may rest on bedrock or a buried layer of wall below the surface of the soil or they may be held in position by stones propping it on either side to keep them from rolling, which by definition would be a part of the wall – neither a before or after “Chicken/Egg Situation” but more of a simultaneous occurrence.”

      Sherlock Stones puffs on his pipe, “Still it is all speculation until you do some soil testing and arrive upon an informed scientific estimate as to when the first of these stones were placed here in such a fashion.”

     “What tests would those be?” I ask.

     “I haven’t the foggiest,” he replies. “I’m not an expert in soil science.”

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

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Luminescence dating refers to a group of methods of determining how long ago mineral grains were last exposed to sunlight or sufficient heating. It is useful to geologists and archaeologists who want to know when such an event occurred. It uses various methods to stimulate and measure luminescence.

It includes techniques such as optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), infrared stimulated luminescence (IRSL), and thermoluminescence dating (TL). "Optical dating" typically refers to OSL and IRSL, but not TL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminescence_dating