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  • Stone mounds

    While artifact hunting in an area near the Salton Sea in CA. my friend and I came upon a hillside with probably 100 pretty evenly spaced and sized stacks of stone. I'm having a hard time believing it is recent. My friend suggested an ancient Cahuilla Indian burial ground. What is any of your thoughts and has anyone seen something like this before?

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  • #2
    Do you have any pictures of the rocks ? I mean close ups the piled rocks look darker than other rocks and might just be fire cracked rocks. What is the pile of dirt upper right side in picture? How big are the rock piles?
    TN formerly CT Visit our store http://stores.arrowheads.com/store.p...m-Trading-Post

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    • #3
      Are you finding any artifacts there?
      South Dakota

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      • #4
        Have you tried looking for the exact location on Google Earth to see what if looks like from above?

        I thought of the remains of an old medicine wheel or some other ritual feature. Also look for any right angles or circular features. these could be shelter anchors for instance. Just a thought.

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        • #5
          To Gary - yes there are allott of artifacts(scrappers, knives, hole punchers, and arrowheads) there was a large presence of Indians here at one time. To DoobieWah - those are some very good suggestions. I'm not sure I know how to evaluate some of the pictures but I will try. Thanks for the advice. I have been thinking allott and while I have a hard time believing a recent group of people p took the substantial effort to pile these stones for no reason , I also wonder why there is no soil accumulation on the piles of they have been there for thousands f years. I'm going back out there tomorrow with my wife and we will do a little more thinking. Thanks for the suggestions.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by jcannon748 View Post
            I also wonder why there is no soil accumulation on the piles of they have been there for thousands f years. I'm going back out there tomorrow with my wife and we will do a little more thinking.
            Soil won't accumulate on the stone piles because of wind erosion. Little grains of sand bounce along in the wind for miles, and basically "slide" off the rocks and "stick" to the areas that are covered in sand/soil now. (Basically most of the sand that was there is probably in the Algodones Dunes, or other smaller sets of dunes.) It's a pretty typical feature in a desert landscape in the Chihuahua and Sonoran deserts.

            How big are the rock piles? It certainly could be an ancient burial ground, but there are lots of other potential explanations that range from ancient to just old.

            In parts of Texas and Northern Mexico ancient groups roasted Sotol bulbs by burying them in hot rocks, and they created a lot of small middens of rocks from that process. At big sites the middens merge to form huge middens, but in other areas they are just piles similar to those (again, depending on the size.) Not sure if they did this in California, but I'd have to image they figured out that a lot of those big desert plants are very edible.

            Any space in the middle of the piles like a hole? Early attempts at desert agriculture in some areas occasionally planted lemon and other citrus trees with rocks around the bases for protection (you have to protect the trunk from the sun and the shoots from goats/sheep.) They normally don't look quite like that, but it's a modern example of something that you just don't see now a days. The same is occasionally done for different varieties of agave and other desert plants where people wanted to plants to control wind erosion or for other purposes.

            Hong Kong, but from Indiana/Florida

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            • #7
              Joshua that is a good question, I will ask again too. "How big are the piles?" Was there a problem with my other questions? I am always looking to learn something new. I cannot learn something if I am not allowed to ask questions.
              TN formerly CT Visit our store http://stores.arrowheads.com/store.p...m-Trading-Post

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