Ancient structures, new enigmas in ShutesburyDate: 11/21/2022 SHUTESBURY – Born into the farming life, David was still a boy when he learned about the ancient stone mysteries in the forest.
“It’s just one of those things if you own land in this part of the country,” David – who chose to omit his last name – said. “There’s a lot of these things. There’s probably some that people are not really talking about. Probably some that haven’t been discovered.”
Now 74, David joined a group from New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA) to visit a few of the thousands of ancient stone structures, sculptures, cairns and stone rows left in the area by Native Americans and other ancient peoples. The Bay State and much of New England is peppered with aboriginal relics, ritual sites, celestial calendars, fish traps and underground chambers, fascinating evidence for the study of human life hundreds or even thousands of years ago.
David asked that his last name not be revealed, an effort to protect the first structure the group visited, described in NEARA literature as the Shutesbury shrine. The only above ground structure the group viewed, the Shutesbury shrine was built against a large boulder, with two stone walls still standing. The capstone roof, easily half a ton, lay broken and half buried in pine needles, purportedly shattered by a logger felling trees.
Archeologists have studied the Shutesbury shrine for a long time. Retired state forester Anne Marie Kittredge, who led the outing for NEARA, emphasized the historical riches in the area, the singularity of the structure, and a clue to why the shrine might stand where it does: to track seasonal changes. Kittredge emphasized that all the chambers the group would visit were mysterious in their origins and usage, so the shrine may not be a shrine at all. Shards of brown ceramics suggests a later usage as a whiskey distillery.
“This is a rich, rich area for enigmas, as well as things we see elsewhere, that we can put a name on,” Kittredge said. The purpose of the shrine site is still not decided, but the location is suggestive. “I don’t believe in coincidences, so if it’s got an alignment somebody, whoever, and a long time ago, did a lot of looking around to find the right place.”
Alignment refers to location. Aboriginal stone structures were frequently constructed to enable viewing of celestial constellations through a doorway, out through a passageway leading to an underground chamber, or where light from the sun or moon struck into the chamber on a seasonal equinox. Observance of the change of seasons told shamans – or who ever used a site, which may have been Native Americans, Celts, Basques, Nordic explorers or colonial Europeans – when to plant and harvest crops and hold sacred rituals.
Vance Tiede, Connecticut coordinator for NEARA, speculated about the impression a solstice event might have on someone sitting between the granite walls. The site features a spring, now concealed, several feet outside the threshold stone. Solstice light may have entered through a gap in the back wall and created a spectacle.
If there was an opening for ritual observance, Tiede said, “enough to have a beam of light come through to illuminate the pool…if that sends chills up your spine…what do you think it would’ve done for a Nipmuc?”
The NEARA visitors were excited to be on hallowed ground. The visit to a spot sacred for people as much as 12,000 years ago lit the imagination of Kate Beesley, a Barre resident who came on the outing with her father.
“I like the detective work of knowing about them, and then having it be secretive, and having to figure out where it is, and truck through the woods to find them,” Beesley said. “It feels magical.”
The group also visited several underground chambers, including the “old Indian spring,” which may not have been a water source. The structure, with a short passageway of moss-covered rocks, extends 6 feet underground, to a circular chamber about 3 feet across. Kittredge and several NEARA members noted the earthen mound beside the structure is also unusual, adding further intrigue to the site.
“In my mind’s eye, it’s not colonial. In my mind’s eye it’s not a spring,” Kittredge said. “I can imagine why people call it the old Indian spring, [but] in that back part it’s a circular chamber and it does have a capstone.”
Who built and used the old Indian spring, and for what purpose, is still not understood. Kittredge noted the ancient chamber has an alignment with the stream, a frequent feature of rock structures. Cairns, stone rows that seem to randomly begin and end, and rock art emulating snakes and turtles were also built by ancient cultures in the area.
“I have a sort of a cheat sheet in my head,” Kittredge said. “I want to look at … just the upper reaches of a stream, the beginning of a water shed, and bingo, I want to say at least 25 percent of the time it’s a pretty good bet I’ll find something.”
Another method for locating ancient rock structures in the area is to follow ley lines. Ley lines are places where earthen energy is stronger at ground level, for reasons that are still unclear. Dowsers use earthen energy to find water, for example. According to John Garn, a NEARA member from Leicester, VT, ancient peoples, undulled by exposure to broadband signals and radio waves, had yet to lose a sensitivity to the flow of energy in the land.
“Ley lines are analogous to acupuncture meridians in your body,” Garn said. “They run across the earth. Places where multiple ley lines cross, those are very intense power spots, and a lot of times you’ll find structures there.”
Stonehenge, in Britain, Garn said, was built where six ley lines cross.
The group examined an underground structure, often called the monk’s chamber, located on a small peninsula surrounded by a beaver pond. The uses of the monk’s chamber are also yet to be determined. Shutesbury resident Ellen Trousdale, who lives nearby, has observed the lighting in the chamber on an equinox. She described a burnt spot on the upper wall of the chamber, which may have been evidence of ritual offerings.
“You have the helical rise of the Pleiades when it’s time to start planting your corn,” Trousdale said, referring to a celestial constellation. “That direction is where Lake Wyola is, and…That little niche is where the sun is going to come in, on the longest day of the year.”
Trousdale mentioned Lake Wyola as a landmark. Kittredge also commented that cairns and other rock arrangements served pragmatic purposes when travel was difficult, dangerous and time consuming. Cairns may have marked a fastest route or a safe crossing.
“If they want to align with a mountain over there, they of course are looking for a place where they have a line of sight,” Kittredge said. “The old indian spring was right on a 303 bearing. Not only is it the winter solstice sunset, but it is also a bearing to get you right to” a nearby celestial calendar, a major destination. “They could easily be how we use cairns: go to the river, find the cairn, and that’s where you cross.”
Kittredge read from reports prepared by state archeologists who visited the monk’s cave in 1962 and 1978. The state biologists concluded the underground chamber was used to store fish caught in the beaver pond. Kittredge said, “I don’t buy that.” She also didn’t buy the conclusion that the underground chambers were experimental structures, failed efforts to deal with the rocky New England terrain that would not be repeated.
The difficulty of figuring out the uses of a structure, or the purpose of a stone row that, unlike a fence, begins and ends for no apparent reason, is that we no longer understand the information conveyed by stone work. Donald Maciver ran a conservation land trust for 35 years, but now pursues his passion for finding and identifying the leavings of ancient Native Americans. According to Maciver, stone is what they had to work with.
Maciver said, “The Native Americans in this area, the way they communicated was through what they did with the stones …Sometimes it would be a tribute of something major that happened, someone died, or someone passed along, they would often have a ceremonial stone structure. Their belief is … they’re animated. [The stones] are animated, they aren’t static objects, the way Europeans looked at them.”
Interpretation may still be a problem. Finding and documenting aboriginal stone work, though, is less difficult than in the past. A relatively new technology, lidar, with portable scanning capabilities, can be taken into the field or used from an airplane to help see stone work on the ground.
“We have a lot more tools nowadays to find out what happened back then, than previous generations did,” Kittredge said.
The NEARA has a website, neara.org, with information on spring and fall conferences and membership.
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