A Site With Cairns

Somewhere in northern RI is this group of stone structures at the east face of a steep slope.   Some may have been built by Natives, and others by farmers. The first group, right off the trail, is what appears to be a niche with a pointer directly below.  The pointer points east, towards a swampy area. Pointers may indicate a large structure in the distance (2/22/12).  Unfortunately, any larger structures beyond the swamp have been lost to development.

The niche has smaller stones inside. It is easy to imagine this is some sort of shrine, especially since this figure-in-a-niche imagery is common in churches and on front lawns.  Perhaps the Natives who built it had a completely different interpretation.
     There are some cairns directly downhill from the pointer.

 

The largest has a dimple, which is uncommon in this area.

There are a couple of possibilities for this depression.  Someone long ago was looking for "treasure" in the cairn. Another possibility is that the dimple is built into a large cairn.  As the cairn gets larger and wider, it is easier to stack the larger stones up on the perimeter than to lift or toss them  to the center.  Note how neatly the stones are stacked to the left on the pile.  Maybe the final stage of this type of cairn construction involves tossing smaller stones into the center. This area is an old farm, and  it makes sense that the larger stones would be cleared away before the smaller ones.  Or maybe there was some ceremonial purpose related to the niche and pointer. There is no way to be sure.
     About 250 feet north of the cairns is a strange little structure, a short wall  with some sort of niche built into the slope. The wall is about 7 feet long and 3 feet tall.

 Here's the niche

 Here's a view from the inside.  There is nothing interesting on the ground.

Perhaps poles were anchored in the niche and rested on the wall, creating a temporary shelter.  Since it is against the slope, it would have been wet in the rain. Maybe supplies were stored off the ground inside it, or it was a small  pen for animals.

Meditation Seats

Here is a small enclosure behind an outcrop in an area of Tiverton, RI, with many walls. The structure is about four feet across and  has partially collapsed. 

A  side view.

This is too small to have been  a house or storage shed.  There is no water nearby, so it was probably not a sweat lodge.  There don't seem to be any solar alignments, either.
 In the background is a wall

What could this small structure be?
Here is another small enclosure in RI, in an area with many cairns, as well as  building foundations and quarries.

Here is one in  Sharon, MA,  near an old cabin. This one is constructed of stacked cobblestones and decorated with a rusty oil drum.

 Here is another of these enclosures, presumable from a later period since it is constructed of  cinder blocks.

And here is what these might have been. If this wooden outhouse was removed, the outline of bricks and stones in the foundation would be very similar to those above.  The door side of all these enclosures is open.

Although the first enclosure shown above is partially collapsed, it is easy to imagine the wooden outhouse structure resting on the stones, with the large stone to the left acting as a step to the door. A Google Images search of "prayer seat" turned up many images of these square-cornered small enclosures from the northeast.  I even saw a small squarish stone enclosure at the Pequot Museum at Foxwood, in a reconstruction of an early 19th century reservation farm site.  The marker said the purpose was unknown.  Once every farm had at least one. The prayer seats shown in Mavor & Dix are rounded. Maybe these square structures should be called meditation seats, since they supported a  "Meditation Room".

August 13 in April at Miantonomi's Cave

     Recently I returned to Miantonomi's Cave.  Here is a close-up of the  mark on the cave wall that was touched by the sun dagger in the equinox (almost) time lapse video (3/30/2013).  These two pieces protrude about 0.5 inch above the cave wall, and are about three inches apart.

 They are directly under the projecting stone.

The sun sets at the same position on the horizon twice every year, except for summer and winter solstices. There are 54 days from June 21 to August 13, and from June 21 back to April 28.  On April 28, the pattern of sunlight in Miantonomi's Cave would be similar to that on August 13, but there would be no foliage blocking the sunlight.  First  I returned on April 26.  The sky  was sunny when I left my home, and by the time I reached Miantonomi's Cave, it was obvious that Nature was not completely cooperative. This experience made me appreciate the difficulties of using sun patterns for determining important dates.

Luckily, the clouds kept breaking, and I obtained some photos and time lapse video. I returned on April 28, and this time, the clouds held off until about 6:45 PM.  The best pictures from both dates follow. The sun enters the large window first through the notch around 5:26 PM,

and then forms a large dagger that touches the first dimple around 6:30.  The dimples are marked above.

Around 6:35, the dagger touches the second dimple, and the second sun dagger appears. It is formed by light entering through the small window.

This second sun dagger moves upward, touching the crack in the wall.  The final pattern occurs at 7:04, when the light from the large window touches the end of the projecting stone.

It is easier to get a feeling for these events by watching the time lapse video made  4/26/2013. Clouds kept going past the sun,  making the sun daggers vanish and reappear, but the final sequence is clear. The video made 4/28/2013 shows the sequence of the sun dagger touching the dimples and the second sun dagger appearing and moving up the wall until the clouds blocked the light. The first sun dagger seems to disappear briefly after touching the second dimple. This also happened on 8/13/2012.  This was not caused by passing clouds, but probably by trees outside the cave.
     This is essentially the same pattern as on 8/13/2012, except then the foliage kept diffusing the light, instead of clouds.  I suspect there are two marks for equinox, and three dimples for August 13, to allow for estimation of days to these events, in case of cloudiness.

      I always notice something new whenever I return to the cave, something revealed by changes in light or season.  The projecting stone resembles an animal head from the side.  This time I  noticed something shiny along the line for the "mouth".  It even looked like there was a drop of water at the end of the stone.   The shiny area felt smooth, as if there were crystals there.

The veins of crystals are marked above.  Maybe this stone was chosen because the effect is like teeth shining in the half-light of the cave.
     Only 50 more days until summer solstice....

Boulders on a Hill

Monday was a lovely spring afternoon to go for a walk through a marshy area.  The plants sprout and bloom here first, emphasizing how productive swamps are. This area is marked as a farm on a map from the 1880s, and there was a small sawmill  further up this stream.  Now the forest is reclaiming the land.

On the side of the  steep hill overlooking the swamp,  a rocky slope faces southwest.  Near the bottom stands this propped boulder.  The boulder and base have different textures and colors, indicating they weren't broken from one large boulder.

Note how neatly the boulder fits on the base at the points of contact.  The lower edges of the boulder look like they were chipped away to create this effect.
     At the top of the slope, this massive pile of rocks is neatly stacked on top of a couple of boulders.

The rocks are similar in size, and have flat faces.   A small slab resembling a manitou is standing in the middle of the pile.  Someone may have placed it there to keep it from getting broken.  Although this pile could have started as a donation pile, its later purpose is suggested by its location at  the end of a long farm wall.

My guess is that the rocks were broken up from larger stones and  stored here for use in further wall building.  A farmer, or Natives working for a farmer, broke up these rocks from boulders at the top of the hill and stacked them here. Following the wall, I see this impressive propped boulder.

It looks like it is in danger of tumbling down the hill.  Note the sharp edges on the planes  facing the camera.  It  looks like pieces were broken off.

Here is the front view.  There is a large concavity to the right in the boulder, suggesting some deliberate alteration.  Many of the propped boulders I have seen look like stone was chipped away  to create  the typical smooth, oblong shape. The boulder is a light, smooth stone, while the base is foliated granite.  This is probably a glacial erratic, dropped here by a glacier 17,000 or more years ago.  Glacial erratics such as Hipses Rock often had some significance to the Native Americans, at least as landmarks and meeting points.  In front of it, a small piece of quartz, and then a large chunk of quartz.

And finally, on the trail back to the marsh, a nearly buried piece of quartz next to the stick, and a young bent tree.

The first two pieces of quartz have not been sitting here long, since they are on top of the ground.  This area was farmed in the 1800s, then abandoned to the forest.  The propped boulders suggest Native use, and the piled rocks and walls, farm use.  The quartz and  bent trees suggest Native remembrance.

                                                                    

    

Modification of Another Native Stone Row

       Here is another unusual stone row from the same area as a previous post (3/27/13).   This segment extends between two large outcrops. Its unusual structure suggests it was built by natives.
 

 Manitou-like stones stand against this wall.   I often thought these were placed to hold the stones in place.

However, a small space is  visible between the manitous and the other stones of the row.  These would not have served to hold the stones back. One possibility is that a farmer utilized this stone row by placing  these stones to hold fence posts.

This wall is uphill from an old farm road, in an area with building foundations. Here I have imagined it as a meadow fence with barbed wire.

Once I started looking, I noticed this detail in other old photos.

Of course, this modification would appear at walls used to keep in livestock.

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Strangest Propped Boulder Yet

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Somewhere in Northern RI, a stream is dammed to form a small pond.

The water flows out of a small opening in the wall.  There are no building foundations, so it does not look like there was a mill here.

Further upstream, and leaning against an outcrop, is a very strange propped boulder.  One end is nearly square, and about 2 feet on each side.

This side view shows it has its own bent tree, and a strange shape, like an  old TV picture tube. Usually propped boulders are oblong with smooth contours.

Also, the other propped boulders in this area are on top of hills, not in a low area near a stream.
     This shape does not look natural, so  it may have been quarried from a larger boulder at this outcrop. Note that the supporting stone is pointed, and has very little contact with the propped boulder.  Usually  supporting stones are rounded or square.  The pointed supporting stone could have been used to allow greater access to the lower part of the boulder for carving, or for some ceremonial use.  Whether this shape was intentional, or if this was a work in progress, is a mystery.

Vernal Equinox (Almost) at Miantonomi's Cave

I have visited this cave many times and photographed sunlight forming daggers and other patterns on the cave wall.  While I have seen some distinctive patterns on August 13 and autumn equinox, the light  is diffused by the surrounding trees. At vernal equinox, the pattern would be the same as that at autumn equinox, but clearer due to bare trees. That said, it is hard to get vernal equinox pictures, since lately the weather has been cloudy, rainy, or even snowy.
       Last weekend the weather was clear, so I took  photos in the cave.  The first pattern happens around 5:43, when a thin line of light enters through the notch at the bottom left of the larger window.

Here is the thin line of light appearing inside the cave.

By 5:51 this light spread to a large triangle,

that by 5:58 spread further along the wall.

The light continued spreading, and formed the final pattern by 6:33 PM, with a point that extends to a faint mark on the wall beneath the projecting stone.

Here the mark appears  near the center of a photo taken 9/21/2012.  

     The mark looks like \ /, which could be an inverted triangle.  I have seen an inverted triangle carved into a boulder at another site with alignments (1/23/13 ).
The problem with taking photos is that I may be missing a pattern and  introducing my own shadow.  This time I tried  time-lapse photography.  I  placed the camera on the ledge on the western wall of the cave, set to take 1 frame/second with a playback of 30 frames/second.  This condensed  about 50 minutes into almost 2 minutes. The video is at Youtube here.  
      Since the camera is looking at bright spots, they appear a little burned out.  However, it is easy to see how   the point of sunlight moves across the cave wall and touches the mark at 6:39.  Since this is 10 days after equinox, the point may extend slightly beyond the mark. 
     The sun will set in the same position for August 13 at the end of April.  Maybe time-lapse will reveal more patterns at Miantonomi's Cave.