Unusual stone wall in Tyringham, MA. Credit: Bess Dilman.
Last Year, a devoted hiker named Bess Dilman kindly sent me some photos of an unusual New England wall located near the Appalachian Trail in Tyringham, MA. It’s been puzzling her for a while, and others were equally bemused. So, she wrote to see if I had an opinion. Of course I do!
My opinion –coming from stone wall science– is that we should always describe what something is before we begin speculating about why something exists. The intermediate step in this process of reasoning is called classification, the creation and naming of categories.
I decided to use her request to feature why New England needs a standardized nomenclature for describing its stone walls, and a classification large enough and flexible enough to cover ALL kinds. Last year, after 20 years of collaboratives work, I published just such a nomenclature and classification in the peer-reviewed journal Historical Archaeology. This mini-monograph, titled “Taxonomy and Nomenclature for the Stone Domain in New England,” is a tool that I hope will help. The Stone Wall Initiative website may also be helpful.
STONES: The shapes range from blades to tablets, the former being longer relative to their widths. These shapes are usually quite rare within what I call the glacial mix because such thin sheets of rock are easily crushed, and their corners and edges rounded off. The composition or lithology is amazingly uniform. Every stone in sight seems to be the same composition, some sort of granitic gneiss with broad foliation folds intact, suggesting that all the stones were described from the same local source, perhaps an ad hoc quarry, an outcrop, or a large split slab. Were glacial fieldstones involved, other lithologies and shapes would be present. The presence or absence of marks (drill-holes, flaked shape, intentional breaks would provide a clue here. The size of the stone is as unusually uniform as its shape and lithology. With one possible exception, all are what I call “hefted” stones, those small enough to be lifted and set into place by human muscle. In an earlier version of my nomenclature, I called them “two-handers.” The degree of order of the stones is clearly what I call “patterned,” the highest degree of order, meaning there was some sort of artistic or architectural intent above and beyond being “laid” (fitted and planned like outdoor chess), which is above and beyond “stacked” (crudely stacked above one another), which is above and beyond being “dumped” (randomly pitched or tossed with no stacking or fitting).
SUBSTRATE: The broad curve of the landscape grade at the base of the wall, and the sharp tips of all stones at the bottom, suggest that the wall rests on a glacially smoothed boss of rock. Otherwise the stones would have been pressed downward into forest duff and topsoil. The apparent precariousness of the stones supports this interpretation because any significant settling would have likely caused collapse.
DEFINITION: Within the domain of all historic stone objects, this is a wall because it meets all five criteria. Composition: made of stone. Granularity: made of particles or grains or stones, rather than a single large slab of rock. Continuity: continuous along its length. Elongation: more than four times (arbitrary threshold) longer than it is wide. Height: is both knee-high (arbitrary threshold) and has stones resting on stones. This puts it in the class “wall” rather than the classes concentration, line, or notable stone.
STRUCTURE: I see no foundation tier. So it’s a two tiered wall with a basal group of more massive stones laid diagonally downward toward the left, and a higher tier laid either downward to the right (to create a chevron pattern) or horizontally.
DIMENSIONS: I’m guessing it’s a thigh-high, and one-stone wide rectangle in cross section (the YZ plane). If wider at the base, it’s trapezoidal in cross section
TAXONOMY: We’ve already established that, within the stone domain, this is in the class wall. Within this class, it’s in the family freestanding wall, because it has two sides. Within this family, it’s a type known as a single wall because it was not built of two sides slanted in toward each other for stability. Within this type, it is a panel subtype because it is an upward stack of stone where wall width and stone width are the same. Within this subtype, it’s an open variant because there is no attempt to minimize the pore spaces by fitting stones together.
INTERPRETATION: Colloquially, this is known as a lace wall, though it’s a very unusual one because this shape stacks so easily to minimize pore space. Most lace walls are made of rounded ball-shaped stones which require high porosity and stones not bearing weight are very unstable. Now, having described it with a nomenclature and classified with with a taxonomy, we can speculate on why. This wall makes no sense as a “linear landfill” for field clearing. It might have been a fence, but seem too low. It could have been a border to a field or farm. So, let’s call it an unexplained anomaly, perhaps an idiosyncratic, “what the hell,” folk art expression of some sort, likely built from locally quarried stone on bedrock. A reconnaissance of the terrain would provide other clues. But for now, let’s just call it a “Bladed Lace Wall.”
If you have an odd wall you want interpreted, please feel free to send me some descriptions and images. Perhaps I’ll start a separate section of the website for this.