# Historians/Anthropologists/Geologists: Any idea what these piles of rock are? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 15, 2007, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historians-anthropologists-geologists-any-idea-what-these-piles-of-rock-are/392294 "2007-02-15T01:55:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![lokij](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/5e9695/32.png) [@lokij](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lokij)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2007, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historians-anthropologists-geologists-any-idea-what-these-piles-of-rock-are/392294/21 "2007-02-16T22:26:43Z")
[QUOTE=Sampiro] Speaking of changing topography and landscape, what’s amazing to me is how COMPLETELY all evidence of a structure can disappear. The plantation big house that’s linked above stood on the same spot from the late 1830s to the mid-1980s. The old couple who lived there when I was a kid (not related to me but our nearest non-relative neighbors in straight-line progression [over a mile as the road goes]) kept an acre around the place golf-course flat and smooth with goats and sling blades and occasional hired lawn mowers. Today, you cannot tell there was EVER a house there- the whole place is covered in pines and rowan oaks and wild grasses and briars. Ditto my own family’s homeplace (pics in the same catalog as the rocks). My great-aunts kept that place covered in flowers and mostly dirt. Today, not much over a decade since somebody last occupied that house (it was used as a flea market for a while), there are trees and grass taller than I am in their front yard and I couldn’t even find their vegetable garden. (Daffodils and roses and petunias are abundant, though, descendants of the ones from their flowerbeds that have now scattered all through the woods.) [/QUOTE] Are the piles even, or in any particular shape? I ask because I’ve seen old wood cabins that were raised off the ground to prevent rot and they used dry stack stone pilings for the foundation. 150+ years might have rotted all evidence of any structure away and left the piles of stones. ---
**Author:** ![Phlosphr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Phlosphr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phlosphr)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2007, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historians-anthropologists-geologists-any-idea-what-these-piles-of-rock-are/392294/22 "2007-02-16T23:11:26Z")
[QUOTE=Sampiro] Off-hand I can’t think of a single old structure built with rock down here. Most old houses are frame, richer folk’s homes and public buildings were often built of brick (often purchased cheaply from ships that used them as ballast when empty) but you almost never see stone. Anyone know why that is? [/QUOTE] Hold on there, I live in Southeastern Connecticut and I could take you to at least half dozen old homestead foundations built entirely of stone…rough cut field stone dating to early 18th century. Many of the out buildings and areas have rock mounds like the one in the OP. They are not cairnes. They are drawn and plotted field stone, or middens. Middens had stone placed over them to cover the stench…probably didn’t work very well, but early homsteaders did it anyway. It also kept animals from diggin in there. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historians-anthropologists-geologists-any-idea-what-these-piles-of-rock-are/392294/23 "2007-02-17T00:20:41Z")
[Quote=Sampiro] Off-hand I can’t think of a single old structure built with rock down here. Most old houses are frame, richer folk’s homes and public buildings were often built of brick (often purchased cheaply from ships that used them as ballast when empty) but you almost never see stone. Anyone know why that is? [/quote] Wood is still cheap in Noth America and it had the dual advantages of being easy to put up with labor that did not have to go through a lengthy apprentice program as well as actually being considered a nuisance. Any acre that was wooded was an acre that could not be planted. Even if you wanted to keep a few odd woodlots on your property for their scenic beauty (or, more likely, for firewood, game, or syrup, or something), your neighbors still had lots of woods preventing them from getting another acre of corn, tobacco, cotton, or wheat planted, so there was always a ready supply of lumber. [QUOTE=Phlosphr] Hold on there, I live in Southeastern Connecticut and I could take you to at least half dozen old homestead foundations built entirely of stone…rough cut field stone dating to early 18th century. [/QUOTE] THINK, man! You’re in **New England**! The only crop you **raise** is stone, 😃 We see the same trend in NE Ohio. Most of the land was logged off for frame houses, but there are a couple of areas where the glacial moraines that form the backbone of the country pop up with enormous mounds of fragmented stone. There are also a couple of places where the early settlers found good quarry stone. In the villages near either of those occurrences, there are quite a number of either field stone houses or dressed stone houses (depending on the deposit near which the house stands). ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Cymbeline](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_cymbeline/32/9244_2.png) [@Green\_Cymbeline](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Cymbeline)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historians-anthropologists-geologists-any-idea-what-these-piles-of-rock-are/392294/24 "2007-02-17T04:43:07Z")
I am surprised there aren’t any stone houses in your neck of the woods. Where I am from, Loudoun County Virginia, and the surrounding environs, there are tons of old stone houses dating back to the 1700s and 1800s. They are so beautiful. Here are some examples: [Stone House At Harper Park](http://www.co.loudoun.va.us/prcs/otherfac/hhouse.htm) [The famous Stone House at Manassas National Battlefield Park](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Manassas-Stone-House.jpg) [Gorgeous old stone house for sale in Shepherdstown WV](http://www.gregdidden.com/show_property.asp?property_id=90&article_id=1480&domain_id=25) [Oakland Green Bed and Breakfast in Lincoln, Loudoun County, Virginia](http://www.oaklandgreen.com/) [Georges Mill Farm Bed and Breakfast, Lovettsville, Virginia](http://www.georgesmill.com/) [Various old houses in Hillsboro, VA](http://www.visitloudoun.org/visitors-guide/towns/hillsboro/) [Article about Hillsboro, Virginia,‘Town Made of Stone’](http://www.loudounhistory.org/history/hillsboro.htm) _(Ok let me wipe up the pool of drool from looking at those gorgeous houses…)_ ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historians-anthropologists-geologists-any-idea-what-these-piles-of-rock-are/392294/25 "2007-02-17T12:38:20Z")
I vote for the field clearing rock piles also. You find them all over in the woods that have regrown. Indian graves were mostly dirt mounds or raised wood pallets on poles. and caves being sometimes used in the arid states, but this of course is a generalization with exceptions. You never know for sure without research. An older resident of the area may remember the place being a farmers field, and it was his daddies farm. We still have many beautiful stone houses in the Caledonia Bluffs between Portage and Baraboo. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historians-anthropologists-geologists-any-idea-what-these-piles-of-rock-are/392294/26 "2007-02-17T16:56:41Z")
I’ve seen many such cairns in the woods of north Georgia, too. I’m also inclined to believe it was where land was cleared for cultivation. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2008, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historians-anthropologists-geologists-any-idea-what-these-piles-of-rock-are/392294/27 "2008-11-02T21:15:21Z")
(Halloween’s over, but here’s one more zombie: ) I’m resurrecting this thread because I found some new information. While researching an article I came across [this paper on stone mounds constructed by Southern Indians](http://shapiro.anthro.uga.edu/Archaeology/PDFs/Lab%20Series%2017.pdf) (pdf file). It includes lengthy discussion of clusters of small mounds of the type you describe. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2008, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historians-anthropologists-geologists-any-idea-what-these-piles-of-rock-are/392294/28 "2008-11-02T21:34:57Z")
> [@spoke-](#): > > (Halloween’s over, but here’s one more zombie: ) > > I’m resurrecting this thread because I found some new information. While researching an article I came across [this paper on stone mounds constructed by Southern Indians](http://shapiro.anthro.uga.edu/Archaeology/PDFs/Lab%20Series%2017.pdf) (pdf file). It includes lengthy discussion of clusters of small mounds of the type you describe. Ah, thanks. I look forward to reading that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historians-anthropologists-geologists-any-idea-what-these-piles-of-rock-are/392294.md?page=1)