Farmer's Waste Rocks or Native American Stone Piles

In my travels throughout the woods of central New England, I am always looking for things that just don't seem right. Things like piles of rocks that appear in the middle of a forest. Earlier this summer I came across a place like that. At the time there was a lot of ground cover so I couldn't get a good look at them. I went back today.

I am not sure what to make of these stone piles. Stone piles are one of those things that are subject to controversy in the archeological world. Even with proof disproving the theory, the Massachusetts State Archeologist continues to claim that any pile of stones in the woods was made after the European settlers came to this country. They insist the Indigenous people did not work with stone. But as they used to say on Fox News "We report, you decide."

This site is on public land with a marked trail through it. It is located in an area that has historically been used for farming. There are numerous stone walls throughout the property. These walls form several squares. The walls are made of flat rocks, lots of flat rocks. They appear to be broken pieces of ledge. The land is very rocky in areas and doesn't look like it was cultivated many times. There are some huge, old tree stumps indicating it was logged many years ago. 

The section with the stone piles is in one of the walled-in sections. All of the stone piles (I counted at least 20) are within a 1.5-acre section, in the southwest corner of one of the sections. 

The above picture shows a satellite image from Google Earth dated 4/30/2001 with the route of my hike. You can see one stone wall at the left of the picture following along the blue line of my route. You can also see another wall in the bottom right corner. The top of the map is north.

This is a picture of the west side wall. There are also some design elements in the wall as seen in the picture below.

Looking at this picture now I can see what might be an effigy right in the middle. When I am in the field I usually don't see effigies, I don't have the eye for them I guess, but when I get home and look at the picture they tend to jump out at me. 

The piles do not appear to be in any order or alignment. This brings up an interesting question: If these are stone piles constructed by farmers, why are they in a position where the farmer would have to move around them? The piles are constructed of the same type of rock, broken ledge, as the walls. 

The above three pictures are the same pile (Pile 1 on the map). It is a rectangular shaped pile about 6 feet in length, 3 feet in width, and about 2 feet high. The center is filled with rocks although I did not clean any of these piles to look at them. You may be able to notice this pile was intentionally built, these stones were not dumped. Would a farmer take the time to place each of these rocks into a shape or would he have just dumped them?

This pile is about the same size as the first one. Note the two pointed rocks situated on each end. I did not see if they were stuck in the ground. They could have fallen from the top of the pile but I think that would be highly unusual. Could this be a Native American grave?

This picture is of three piles aligned in a straight row on an east-to-west axis. The row does not continue any further than this in either direction so I don't believe it is a stone wall. 

Unlike the other piles, this one appears to be in the shape of a circle. I did not disturb it but I believe it to be filled with other stones. 

This pile almost looks like it could have been an effigy that has been damaged. It isn't as large as some of the other piles. 

Could these piles be of Native American origin? If so, what was their function? Without disturbing any of the piles I am not sure but could this be a burial ground? Or could it be just a bunch of leftover stones the farmer placed here to get them out of the way?

I try not to fall into the trap of claiming everything I find is of Indigenous origin. In this case, there is more evidence leading to the conclusion these piles are not waste rock piles. The obvious questions are:

• Why would the farmer place them in the center of a field and not out of the way?
• Where did all these stones come from? They had to have been brought here from another location. I did not see any ledges in this area.
• Why would a farmer take the time to build these piles instead of just dumping them?
• What was this section of the farm used for? It does not appear to have been heavily cultivated. It was fairly wet in sections even though we have not had a hard rain in months. There were plenty of larger stones in place that would have been removed if the land was used either for crops, a hay field, or even a pasture. 

I will do some further research on this piece of land but I believe on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being it is a Native American site of some kind, I'll give it a 6.