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Date: 11/29/2022
LEVERETT – Eva Gibavic, born and raised in town, has deep reverence for the leavings of people who lived here a long time ago.
“I work with some of the southern New England Native American tribes,” Gibavic said. “They are very protective, understandably, of features. As a general rule, for example, I don’t give out information about sites. I don’t bring people to sites.”
The risk to ancient rock structures, what Gibavic calls features, is the danger of damage or vandalism. Made of rock, features are hard, but may be thousands of years old and in need of delicate stewardship – but the damage most feared is purposeful. Landowners damage ancient rockwork to keep control of it while visitors are disrespectful.
Gibavic, 78, brought curious visitors to a chamber in a brook. The aftermath was devastating.
“I came back and someone had gone in and left candles there, and taken some of the stones out to let more light into the chamber,” Gibavic said. “That was when I decided I wasn’t going to bring people to places anymore … I started working on preservation.”
The Shutesbury shrine, an above ground structure in the next town to the south, was vandalized after visitors to the site returned later with selfish motives. The vandals smashed a stone floor that covered a spring.
Large companies like Eversource and National Grid may dismiss the importance of ancient structures and sites. Earlier in life, Gibavic walked power line corridors, looking for features endangered by a utility. She and tribal members were most relieved when they failed to find anything. If they found no features there were no treasures for the utility to bulldoze.
Gibavic and others in town, members of the conservation and historical commissions and committee, are working to protect aboriginal features through restrictions and other formal protections. Local measures may help, but the most feared and upsetting development is when landowners destroy ancient sites on their land. That type of destruction is very hard to prevent.
“There is a real fear on the part of landholders that things on their land will result in someone trying to take their land away,” Gibavic said. “There were structures in Prattville and Upton that got bulldozed by a guy … He did not want them impacting the possibility of him being able to cellar, and use the land the way he wanted to.”
Gibavic doesn’t know what strategy would best preserve the traces left by people on the land after the last Ice Age. If an ancient feature is publicized landowners’ worst fears may be realized when strangers traipse across their acreage. Signs may announce sites, and how not to damage them. People may vandalize them anyway. Maybe the best option is to remain silent about the ancient features on the land.
“I was brought to some of these sites when I was eight,” Gibavic said. “It was made clear to me, very early, that these sites needed to be protected and not publicized.”