I am writing in regards to an item in your FAQ located on the Review and Compliance section of the Massachusetts Historical Commission website. (http://www.sec.state.ma.us/mhc/mhcrevcom/revcomidx.htm) Here is the entry in question:
I’m concerned that stone piles in a project area may be Native American grave markers. What should I do?I am quite concerned that the above entry from your FAQ discourages developers and property owners from investigating potentially important archaeological sites. Furthermore, the entry is a professionally irresponsible generalization which paints a broad brush across the entire Massachusetts landscape. It is not only historically inaccurate, flying in the face of overwhelming historical evidence, but it also directly contradicts the Commission's own mission to identify, evaluate, and protect important historical and archaeological assets of the Commonwealth.
Piles or continuous walls of fieldstones are common in rural Massachusetts wherever there are rocky soils. When historians and archaeologists have conducted thorough, professional research into such stone piles, they have invariably shown that these features are not associated with the Native American settlement of Massachusetts. When it is possible to determine their origin, stone piles prove to be related to agricultural activities such as clearing of fields for pasture or cultivation, and/or marking property bounds during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, pursuits that were once much more common in what may now be residential suburbs. Because stone piles or walls often marked property lines or boundaries between different land uses such as pasture and woodlot, they are often in a linear row or other geometric pattern, some of which may be consistent with cardinal compass points, solstice sunrises or sunsets, or other celestial phenomena. http://www.anthropology.ccsu.edu/fraudsweb/frauds.htm
Read more of James David Porters Historical Research which back up this blatent dis-information
http://massachuset.blogspot.ca/2009/10/dear-massachusetts-historical.html
