This handbook is the first comprehensive field guide to both agricultural and Native American stone structures found throughout northeastern United States. These stone structures include stone cairns, chambers, standing stones, niches, enclosures, stone walls, foundations, wells, pedestal boulders, Manitou stones, and other structures. The handbook provides the means to identify, document, analyze, and interpret these structures.

A Guide to New England Stone Structures is a basic field guide to identifying the many different types of stone structures found while hiking through the forest and conservation lands in New England.

The main complex of the America’s Stonehenge site in New Hampshire is a collection of stone chambers, enclosures, niches, standing stones, carved drains & basins, and astronomical alignments. The archaeological community has largely dismissed this seemly eclectic collection of structures as the work of an eccentric farmer named Jonathan Pattee who built his house on top of the ruins in the 19th century. Other researchers have sought to compare the chambers and astronomical alignments to stone structures from around the world built by other ancient peoples. No one has thought to evaluate the site on its own merits, specifically evaluating its architecture. Architecture can tell you a lot about a culture. Using this approach the author unravels the mystery surrounding the site. This architectural study revealed the site was built in a series of distinct phases each with its own unique style while at the same time incorporating key concepts and ideas from previous phases. There is a clear evolution of building skills and cultural ideas that can be followed through the architectural build-out of the site. Because key features and ideas were carried forward from one phase to the next, we now know that the site was the work of a single culture over a several thousand year period. Stone tools and pottery recovered from archaeological excavations at the site confirm that the builders were Native Americans. The idea of Native Americans building stone structures for ceremonial and spiritual purposes has gained a lot of credibility over the past twenty-five years. There is mounting evidence that hundreds of ceremonial stone landscapes (CSL) with stone cairns, niches, enclosures, standings stones, chambers and astronomical alignments found throughout northeastern United States are part of a broad based Native American cultural tradition. The America’s Stonehenge site is one of the most sophisticated and culturally complex of these sacred ceremonial places. The second part of this book uses primary source materials like deeds, town records, court cases and genealogy to reconstruct the history of the Pattee family who owned the hill where the site is found from 1739 through 1863. The Pattees started out in the 1700s as a prosperous family with a house in North Salem village and a 248 acre farm. By the 1820s, the third generation was reduced to owning 15 acres of the original farm and living in a small house built on top of the ruins of the site. Despite his many financial misfortunes, Jonathan Pattee (third generation) managed to hold on to and protect the site.

The Art of Splitting Stone is a detailed study of the history, tools, and methods used to split, hoist, and transport quarried stone in pre-industrial New England (1630-1825). It is an invaluable resource for historians, archaeologists, and stone masons interested in identifying and dating early stone splitting and quarrying methods. The amateur researcher and avid outdoors person will find the book useful as a field guide to identifying split boulders and stone quarries abandoned in the woods.

From the time of the American Revolution to the end of the 19th century, Lawton Foster Road in Hopkinton, Rhode Island was home to a small rural community. A few families eked out a living on the rocky poor soils through growing corn, rye, potatoes, apples, small scale sheep farming, and timber harvesting. Today, the land has reforested and much of it has become wildlife conservation property. These lands harbor a big mystery. Over 1500 stone structures have been found including stone cairns, three stone chambers, several serpent effigies, enclosures, niches, triangle symbolism and other odd man-made features. These are in addition to the more recognizable historic structures like house and barn foundations, stone walls, and two saw mill sites. Who built these enigmatic stone cairns? When? And for what purpose? A dedicated team composed of stone structure researchers, field documentation team, local historians, and conservation people set out to unravel this mystery through documenting the structures, researching the genealogy of the families who lived there, deed research, and analysis of the structure themselves and their relationships to each other. The results of this multi-year effort were a major surprise. The findings challenge conventional historical and archaeological assumptions about these stone structure sites.

For most people, the term “root cellar” evokes an image of a brick or stone masonry subterranean structure tunneled into a hillside. These classic root cellars are only one of a number of different types of structures used to preserve root crops, vegetables and fruits over the past 400 years. The other structures include subfloor pits, cooling pits, house cellars, barn cellars, field root pits & trenches, and root houses. Root Cellars in America provides a history of all the structures, discusses their design principles, and details how they were constructed. The text is accompanied by period illustrations from the agricultural literature along with archaeological photographs.

For most people, the term “root cellar” evokes an image of a brick or stone masonry subterranean structure tunneled into a hillside. These classic root cellars are only one of a number of different types of structures used to preserve root crops, vegetables and fruits over the past 400 years. The other structures include subfloor pits, cooling pits, house cellars, barn cellars, field root pits & trenches, and root houses. Root Cellars in America provides a history of all the structures, discusses their design principles, and details how they were constructed. The text is accompanied by period illustrations from the agricultural literature along with archaeological photographs. There has been a long standing debate whether the stone slab roof and corbelled beehive shaped subterranean structures in northeastern United States are root cellars or Native American ceremonial stone chambers. New research indicates some are root cellars and some are ceremonial chambers. The third edition has a new chapter exploring this topic. Detailed guidance is provided on how to distinguish the two from each other based on differences in their architectural traits.