Special Cairn Field & StoneWorks Site Pt. 5- Frog Effigy Propped Boulder, Stone Bench Dolmen At Edge Of Vernal Pool

Special Cairn Field & StoneWorks Site Pt. 5- Frog Effigy Propped Boulder, Stone Bench Dolmen At Edge Of Vernal Pool

I did alot of clearing around this boulder, especially slowly with my bare hands (this was the standard way I cleared through the general lot.)  This boulder, which eventually revealed itself to be a propped boulder in the form of an effigy was almost totally buried except for the top part where moss can be seen.  There were several trees growing on top of it that I cut down with a hand saw, and to get the roots I needed to dig around the boulder to expose and loosen the deep roots.  After I cleared the larger tree roots away I finished clearing around the boulder with my hands.  At times I even thought that I might be turning into a bear.  I even kept my kung fu training in mind, which in turn served to facilitate and venerate my custodial duties, as I cleared away many large heavy piles I made of saplings, and trees that I cut to pieces, as well as thorns, making sure to challenge myself with the weight of the load, burdening myself to haul heavy loads away from the site location.  I balanced the loads on my shoulders and the top of my head, making sure to apply as much pressure to my head as I could bear, challenging myself, helping to condition this part of the body (many kung fu exercises focus on conditioning different areas of the body- iron palm conditioning for instance, springing legs drills, etc.)  Before I cleared this area of the woods you couldn't even walk through there.  Now there are paths and significant parts of the stoneworks has been cleared, and not only have I seen deer and turkey but now fox, coyote and bobcats have returned as well, and the birds have come back to this site to nest in the taller trees, as it is opened up for their flight, and whenever I am back there during the day they seem to be chirping now and swooping around.  There is even one or two hawk nests in the tall pines.  This took up my spare time for a couple of years, even in the winter if there wasn't any significant snow.

Like I said there was clearing around this boulder which revealed it to be a propped boulder effigy.  The boulder is placed above a small vernal pool.  In this picture you can clearly see the beak or snout of an amphibian creature such as a frog or turtle worked out in the stone as well as the other facial features such as mouth slit.  You can notice where the stone was cut to give it such an effect, definitively showing this boulder was chiseled out, if ever so slightly modified:

A fuller view of the boulder.  The boulder is propped on top of a smaller stone slab.  Note the unusual blue stone with a slit in it that was found at the base of this boulder (in it's original place near the right corner of this pic.):

Another view of the effigy boulder.  Mark my words there are more effigy boulders just like this all over the place, alot of which are partially buried and obscured.  I have given coverage to similar boulders like this at other sites on public land that have not been cleared:

This is the blue stone with the slit in it found at the base of the boulder.  Could it be some kind of a plummet or weight?  I don't know if I saw this in Peter Waksman's Rock Piles blog or Tim MacSweeney's WakingUpOnTurtleIsland's blog, or somewhere else, but I remember seeing the other year that a researcher from down in Virginia or Kentucky (or maybe West Virginia) found an identical stone to this in one of those states and was asking if anyone else knew anything about such unusual stones.  Well, if that researcher is seeing this, here is another one:  

Another view:

Stone bench dolmen propped above the side of the vernal pool:

A nice place to sit:

That's all for the coverage of this site for now.  I am glad I could take people through this tour.  

       

Special Cairn Field & StoneWorks Site Pt 4- StoneWall Features of An Obvious Native Origin

Special Cairn Field & StoneWorks Site Pt 4- StoneWall Features of An Obvious Native Origin

I would just like to say a final word about the cairns themselves to wrap up the last post.  There are at least several cairns that have not been cleared, some of which I identified were even under the top soil.  I have no intention of clearing around these cairns.  I only cleared around the ones whose top stones could be seen poking out with the naked eye, and sometimes a cairn was revealed by general forest clearing when I was pulling up saplings, thornes & cutting down overgrowth of young trees.  May be by collaborating with researchers in the future a closer look at these yet unrevealed cairns could help with the general research of this site.

We will now focus our attention on some of the stone-wall features which should reveal non-debatable, un-deniable proof that these walls are of an indigenous origin.  Curt Hoffman was impressed and took note of some of these features.  Once research into these sites takes off by the individual a clear difference in many cases can usually be distinguished between a colonial or later wall and a wall of indigenous origin- I have described some of these details before throughout this blog.

In the book Manitou by Mavor and Dix on page 17 they talked about an excavation around a stone wall in Vermont that revealed a green layer of soil that geologists indpendantly analyzed who "were of the opinion that it was either the first soil laid down after the recession of the last glacial age or the soil remaining from an interglacial period BEFORE the last glaciation.  This astounding result implies antiquity of at least 10,000 years for material in the undisturbed green layer". (from Manitou by Mavor & Dix pg. 17- my emphasis on the capital letters was stressed.)  Acknowledging and giving proper due credit to these findings would re-establish history as we know it, in this case specifically pertaining to Native people of the NorthEast.

So let's get right into some of the interesting StoneWall features associated with this site.  First we have a perched stone effigy in the form of a bird's head:

I apologize for the crappy quality on this picture (try tracing the stone w/ the computer mouse).  Here we are looking at a Standing Stone (which in length is about up to one's knee) that has been propped up by the side of the stone wall.  The top of the standing stone slightly curves to the left and has been notched/ marked out.  This feature is also in a vertical alignment with the stone marker on top of the cairn featured in part 2, which had the solar alignment:  

Directly above the Standing Stone is this "head and shoulders"-like Manitou stone that has been distingiushably inserted vertically among the stones in the wall.  This Manitou stone also displays a beak and appears to be a bird effigy, may be even a thunderbird of great power:  

View B of the Manitou Bird Effigy:

Moving along the wall we come to this curious feature, which is a break in the wall.  There is a stone step on the lower level with a chink in it that one can perfectly place their heel into while stepping up/ down this small break in the wall.  On the other side of the wall is a propped boulder one can walk up to which can be perfectly seen through the break in the wall:

Very interesting propped stone and stone placements in the wall.  Sitting on top of the propped stone is a triangular stone which appears to be some kind of focal/ meditative point (for instance if you were sitting down staring at it).  I have shown the same kind of triangular stones in walls before at other sites shown in this blog, one of which appears directly outside an underground room I chronicled last month:

A turtle effigy in the wall or perhaps even an anthropamorphized "turtle man".  On the neighboring land behind the wall is a ledge that Curt Hoffman was very keen to take note of:

Two quartz balls hanging out at the base of a stone:

What looks like an altar/ small enclosure in the wall.  The altar, or stone slab has an exposed quartz vein running down the length of it:

View of one of the sides of the stone wall:

Another Standing Stone found associated with this wall.  This was found knocked over and I simply stood it up where I found it.  This is nicely worked out: 

Here I show a crescent-shaped stone idol that was found next to the standing stone in the above pic:

Another crescent shaped stone idol, bird-like, with burn marks on the base of the stone, indicating it's use in ceremony: 

Rounded stone propped up on the wall.  A bear's head?  Deer's head?  Or is that a worn-out moss-covered etching of a snake in the stone?:

Stone slab in the wall with a stone point underneath the middle of the slab:

Another view of stone-wall section:

Part 5 will concentrate on a propped boulder frog effigy above a vernal pool, and a stone bench dolmen next to the vernal pool which should wrap things up for this site.

Special Cairn Field & StoneWorks Pt 3- More of the Cairn Grid

Special Cairn Field & StoneWorks Pt 3- More of the Cairn Grid

Shown here for our learning and appreciation are most of the other cairns that comprise this cairn field.  Peter Waksman and Prof. Curtis Hoffman also suggested that this whole grouping of cairns may be a "grid" that incorporates celestial alignments and archaeo-astronomy, a site that could possibly be measured for such things in the future.  This is likely a key element to this cairn field given the fact that Peter Waksman and other researchers at different sites have found such alignments with cairn fields before (which shows that the placement of cairns and rock piles is very deliberate as they line up with the horizon, constellations, relating to heavenly bodies, etc.)  Also as we saw in the last post there is an obvious solstice alignment occuring with the stone marker on top of the cairn that was shown.

Here we have another cairn that I carefully cleared.  Take a look.  The design of this cairn is very careful and deliberate.  I think on their website stonestructures.org Mary and James Gage looked at a similar cairn at another site that they suspect to be a Thunderbird or bird effigy.  In this case if this was a bird or a thunderbird cairn one could see the head of the bird (the middle top stone that runs off from the boulder platform- it is tilted in a profile position), the tail (bottom stone running off to the ground- a deliberate feature) and the body/ wingspan, being the other stones which carefully terminates in a staright line.  There is then a space with 3 stones that line up in a row.  View A:

It is a good thing that I cleared this cairn when I did because not only had leaf litter and soil grown up over it, there was also a small teenage tree growing right on top of it.  Through doing just a little clearing at a time I was able to cut the whole tree down including it's trunk and roots without disturbing any of the stones out of their place- a lot of careful "feeling" energy involved with the clearing.  View B- 

The cairn next to the first one.  Lots of special stones in shapes and colors:

A picture of the first 2 cairns of this post, they are parallel to each other:

A third cairn.  Could the stone in the middle front center be a turtle's head?  Possibly so- if this is the case than the turtle is carrying the prayers of the people on it's back, meaning that this rock pile is highly sacred.  There are Algonquin legends in the flood stories of the region that clearly states that it was the turtle who carried the people on it's back to safety during the cataclysm.  For a timeline of the flood/ cataclysm I am referring to I will link you here- http://www.ancientlights.org/tl1.html:

Cairn four.  View A:

Cairn 4 view B.  Close-up of an interestingly placed stone on the end:

Cairn Five.  This cairn has a ring or semi-ring of larger stones enclosing a pile of smaller stones placed in the heap.  Some of these stones have been smoothed and polished- some stone colors are white, orange, black and typical gray.  Again, the arrangement of the larger outer stones arguably looks much like a turtle motiff: 

Cairn Five again, view of the outer ring:

Cairn five showing the smaller stones placed in the heap:

Cairn six:

On top of cairn six, note the blue'ish oblong circular stone on the bottom right that has been smoothed:

Another view of the top of cairn six.  Note the spiral formation next to the oblong stone:

Cairn seven:

Cairn eight.  This cairn also has a semi-circle ring of stones around the smaller stones in the heap:

Close up of a sharpened stone inserted into cairn eight:

That's it for the cairns at this site.  There are a couple more cairns I excluded for the sake of being redundant.  Part 4 will concentrate on interesting Stone Wall features of Native origin.  

    

Special Cairn Field & StoneWorks Pt 2- Cairn W/ Bird Effigy Marker, the WatchMan, Solar Alignment

Special Cairn Field & StoneWorks Pt 2- Cairn W/ Bird Effigy Marker, the WatchMan, Solar Alignment

Like I explained in the first post this site is on family property and I spent alot of careful and diligent time clearing around the cairns, which included clearing the woods in general to open it up from overgrowth of saplings, trees and thornes.  I also cleared away leaf litter and some of the top soil around the stones that had built up over time.

This particular cairn is very noteworthy.  First, it has a stone marker in the shape (at least from one angle) of a bird effigy, aka statue.  When I first un-earthed this feature the marker slid off the cairn because all the soil that had built up over the centuries had tilted the marker out of place.  I was actually despaired about this at first.  With a little time and observational skills I identified the original position of the marker stone, having remembered where it slid from, and noticing a semi-circular ring of stones that the base of the marker stone fit into perfectly like a glove, or like a plug goes into a socket, but of course the marker stone stands erect.  State archaeologist and anthropologist Curt Hoffman, upon seeing this feature told me to be on the look-out for a solar alignment regarding this feature, which I have noted as we shall see later in the post.

Other notable features about this cairn is the effigy of a stone man, or rather the head and torso of a stone man, watching the sky.  The features of this cairn may be a sort of stone heiroglyphic language indicating that this spot is good for solar observation.  It would be nice to know more about the story of the stone man- is it simply a marker conveying a message or is it the actual likeness of an Algonquian Powwow (meaning a medicine person/ "priest").  There is also a special blue stone incorporated into the cairn and a smaller standing stone at the base.   

Here are the pics.

The stone marker is on the top, the blue stone is to the left:

A good pic of the stone marker and the stone man (on the bottom- head and torso).  A:

B:

Close-up of the stone man, who is looking up at the heavens:

Close-up of the stone marker from this angle.  Note how it is fitted into the stone ring:

Pic of some of the stones placed on this cairn.  Note the different colored stones, etc;

On the bottom left is a smaller standing stone at the base of the cairn, propped up by two other smaller stones at the base:

From this angle (this is the other side of the cairn which is more bare) the stone marker looks like a bird statue which is looking west towards the setting sun.  One possible theory is that this cairn might have to do with Native agricultural practises and observances.  In Narragansett legend the bird, the Crow brings the people the first seed of corn coming from the south-west.  Here I provide an excerpt from PBS' "Circle of Stories": [ It is believed that Crow brought corn from the Southwest, and told the people to mix it with beans, creating succotash, a Narragansett staple. Traditionally, women have a strong place in society, owning the developed land and dwellings, and often becoming “sachems” (hereditary leaders) and warriors. Women always walked behind the men, not in subordination, but to tell them where to go.]  Could this bird effigy represent the crow and agricultural observances? (which in turn would relate to the seasons, the constellations in the night sky, etc):

Close-up of the bird effigy and the semi-circle stone ring the base of the marker fits into:

Okay.  Now here we have the setting sun during the time of the summer solstice solar event.  Note how the bird effigy is oriented towards the setting sun, thus receiving it's ray of light:

Back to the other side of the cairn to view the cairn and the solar event.  The sun has radiated the stone.  It is blessed:

More from this site to come..