The Stone Wall Initiative is pleased to report the free availability of the first twelve training videos to help you describe your stonewalls. They follow the scientific approach being developed by the SWI coordinator, Robert Thorson. The goal is to facilitate a consistent description of stone walls across New England (and elsewhere) so that we can compare them from site to site and region to region. Good science begins with description and definitions following a common nomenclature and using well-defined categories.
Does New Hampshire have more single walls than double walls? How high is the average wall in Connecticut? We can’t answer either of these questions with any rigor until classification and measurement follow standard protocols. These videos can help you do just that.
The story of these videos begins in late spring 2025. Robert Thorson was offering a series of workshops for towns and land trusts to help them inventory their stone walls. After several workshops, he combined the information into a Manual for the Inventory and Description of Stone Walls that lives on the SWI Website under the heading Resources. His clients suggested he video-record what he was teaching in person and put it online. So, he proposed this to the University of Connecticut’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) as a form of scholarly engagement. Gordon Daigle and Michael Illuzzi, both Media Producers for CETL, met with Thorson for an initial planning meeting, after which he story-boarded the scenes and wrote the scripts. Mike and Gordon then recorded all twelve video and audio tracks on a muggy day in early June in the Fenton Tract of the UConn Forest, where walls are abundant on abandoned farmsteads. Later that summer, Michael edited the results, added a soundtrack, wrote the titles, and mounted them on a publicly available section of Kaltura, UConn’s site for instructional videos. Their professionalism is very much appreciated. Additional videos are planned on interpretation based on the descriptions and classifications below.
Link to STONE WALL SCIENCE for the whole collection of twelve videos.
Link to one of the videos below for specific components of stone wall science.
01 – Stone Wall Science – Introduction
02 – Stone Wall Science – Wall Definition
03 – Stone Wall Science – Wall Classification
04 – Stone Wall Science – Wall Segments
05 – Stone Wall Science – Wall Measurement
06 – Stone Wall Science – Wall Structure
07 – Stone Wall Science – Stone Size
08 – Stone Wall Science – Stone Shape
09 – Stone Wall Science – Stone Order
10 – Stone Wall Science – Stone Lithology
11 – Stone Wall Science – Stone Source
12 – Stone Wall Science – Description Sample Case