Section 1 (click pictures to enlarge)
On December 22, 2001 at 7:30 a.m., approximately thirty people gathered in a field in Boxborough to watch the winter solstice sun rise majestically through an alignment of stone structures. The outing was sponsored by the Sudbury Valley Trustees and led by George Krusen.
Half Moon Meadow Brook is a lithic site located in Boxborough, Massachusetts, and may well be one of the most significant early sites in Middlesex County. Its most outstanding feature is its spectacular winter solstice sunrise alignment. There is also a summer solstice sunrise alignment and a variety of interesting and enigmatic stonework.
Sunrise Gathering
Like the Boxborough Esker (Boxborough Esker Field Report) and the Sarah Doublet Forest (report in progress), it is within the original bounds of what was once the Praying Indian Village of Nashoba and partakes of the same sacred landscape. Interestingly, the Indians were allowed to choose the locations of the Praying Villages and it is believed that they chose their most important places.
The Half Moon Meadow Brook site was first recognized by George Krusen, whose land abuts the property. In 1988 he invited his friend Byron Dix (coauthor of Manitou with James Mavor) to walk the site with him. Byron was immediately intrigued with what he saw. Among other things, he postulated that from a large flat rock in the west corner of the field, the winter solstice sun would rise in a cleft of a large bedrock ridge on the southeast side. He was to be proved absolutely correct.
When the site was put up for sale for house lots in 1998, George was instrumental in arranging its purchase and preservation by the Sudbury Valley Trustees, a non-profit conservation trust. (For further information on the SVT, its properties and programs, see their website: Sudbury Valley Trustees. Please support their conservation efforts.)
The Half Moon Meadow Brook site is located at the junction of Littlefield Road and Littleton Road. Littlefield Road is said to be the route of an ancient Indian trail. The late Mark Strohmeyer, a writer with over 20 years experience in archeology, believed that the trail was specifically created by the Indians for access to the site. Mark was well acquainted with Half Moon Meadow Brook and entertained the possibility that there may have been a Native American presence there even in recent times.
Littleton Road connects with Newtown Road in Littleton, another of the original roads, which gave access to the heart of Nashoba Village at the Sarah Doublet Forest site on Nagog Hill. The Nagog Hill parcel was retained the longest by the Nashoba Indians and considered by author John Mitchell (Trespassing) to be the ceremonial heart of the village. The two sites are only 1½ miles apart as the crow flies. (Dix & Mavor, who do not appear to have been aware of the Nagog Hill site, believe the Boxborough Esker to have been the ceremonial heart of Nashoba Village.)
The meadow is rectangular, situated lengthwise on a northeast-southwest axis. It is approximately 355 feet long by 245 feet wide, bounded almost entirely by stone rows. It slopes downhill to the northwest. Only the meadow is owned by the SVT, all abutting lands are privately held and need to be respected as such.
View of Meadow
The place from where the solstice sunrises are viewed is a low stone slab set in the stone row at the western corner of the field. This is a massive slab, 14 inches thick and approximately 50 inches in diameter. In fact, all the stonework at this corner is quite massive as compared to typical stone rows. It appears that this corner of the field, which is at the edge of a steep drop-off, was built up with stone to give it the needed elevation to view the sunrise points.
Viewing Platform
The winter solstice sunrise point is an elongated mound of bedrock incorporated into the southwestern row, commonly referred to as Sunrise Rock. It is 8½ feet at its highest point, and 42 feet long. The sun rises at midwinter in the notch to the left. There are several notable aspects to Sunrise Rock. First, it is interesting how the stone row is incorporated into the lower face of the ridge, connecting it to the overall site by way of the interconnecting rows. It also appears that the left portion, which makes the cleft with the bedrock, has been maneuvered from the bedrock to its present position, creating the cleft. It appears that it has been supported below by two large slabs and smaller stones.
Sunrise Rock
On the winter solstice, the sun rises at exactly 7:30 a.m. from the cleft as seen from the viewing platform. The azimuth of the sunrise is 1270 true (S53E). Be careful when viewing – it is easy to burn the eyes.
Midwinter Sunrise
Numerous people have commented on animal resemblances in Sunrise Rock. Most who do, see the rock as a reclining animal in profile. The “head” is to the left, resting on its “paws.” The juncture between the head and neck is the sunrise cleft. The white quartz intrusion is the eye. Some people see this as a salmon. Other people see this as a bear or a turtle – both creatures of significance in Algonquin Indian culture. A silhouette of a bear can also be seen in the lichen of the rock. (Please see Solstice Rock for an excellent depiction of sunrise rock as a reclining animal, as well as a fine series of winter solstice sunrise photos. Many thanks to Jim Salem for providing this excellent and informative website.)
Resting on the stone row on the face of Sunrise Rock is a highly visible white stone. This stone resembles an animal head or skull, possibly of a bear or deer. NEARA member Tim MacSweeney has been observing and recording such stone animal heads for some time in an area called “The Fresh Water Fishing Place in the Middle” in western Connecticut. Tim believes that this animal head resembles a deer, while I am inclined to see a bear.
Stone Head in Boxborough Stone Head in CT - Tim MacSweeney
According to Tim’s research, both the bear and deer were revered by the New England Algonquin culture as “clean and pure” and “kings among animals.” To quote further from his excerpt from Gladys Tantaquidgeon’s Folk Medicine Of The Delaware And Related Algonkian Indians: “The Delaware consider the bear and deer to be the greatest of all animals. The bear is also called ‘Our Grandfather.’ Both animals are considered closely akin to the Indian, but the Delaware believe that the bear has the most human-like traits..." (For further pictures of stone animal heads, and details of Tim’s investigations in this area, please see his NEARA report: Bear's Head Stone.)
A second solstice alignment is made by the Midsummer sunrise. This is also viewed from the same place as the winter one, from the stone platform in the west corner of the field. This alignment was suspected by George, but the heavy forestation on the hill in that direction prevented any direct observation. On doing a ground check, he noticed that there were two low rounded mounds of stone next to a stone row in approximately the line of the proposed midsummer sunrise. The larger of the two mounds is approximately 2 feet high and 11 feet in diameter. He conjectured that the midsummer solstice sun would rise over this stone mound.
Midsummer Sunrise Corridor
As owner of the land, George cut a corridor through the trees from the pile to the fields edge along a sightline from the viewing platform. His work was rewarded on June 21, 2000, when the sun rose over the left portion of the mound at 5:30 a.m.. The azimuth of the summer solstice sunrise is 66.50 true (N66.5E).
Midsummer Sunrise - Courtesy of Rob Carter
There are several interesting features of the summer sunrise mound. The mound is made out of small hand-sized rocks – the kind of rocks one would assume would be turned up in the process of cultivation with a plow. The larger rocks of the adjacent row if constructed by Colonials would have been placed there in an effort to clear the land to make it possible for plow-style cultivation, the pile of smaller stones coming later as they were turned up.
To some, however, the mound resembles a turtle. There is a theory that many of these stone mounds and piles are representations of turtles, which were considered spirit animals by the Algonquins. I have seen several piles that do indeed have a turtle resemblance and have noted that the ones most resembling turtles are made from these smaller hand-sized stones.
Sunrise Mound
Continuing 20 feet past the stone mound on the sunrise sightline, the adjacent stone row cuts diagonally across the sight path. This section of row is quite wide, being 10 feet wide and 100 feet long, and bisected by the sightline. Its width is comprised of thousands of small hand-sized rocks piled up against its far side, resulting in its 10 foot width and 100 foot length: a long wide pile of stones piled up against an existing row. It doesn’t seem unnatural that these small-sized rocks would be turned up in cultivation and placed along an existing row so as to take up the least arable land. With the amount of small rocks in this pile, I would wonder where they would have come from had they not come from plowing. Unless you dig, it is the larger rocks that one finds readily protruding from the surface.
Wide Row
On the other hand, I find it quite significant that this wide section is the one that is bisected by the midsummer sunrise line. It certainly makes an artificial ridge of the same length and massiveness (but not height – it is only 3½ feet high) as the winter sunrise ridge. If the winter sunrise alignment was constructed using a natural rock formation, perhaps it was considered necessary to construct a corresponding formation for the midsummer one. It is worth noting that the axis of the wide stone pile and Sunrise Rock are both are in line and are connected in a roundabout way by the network of stone rows, giving a subtle interconnectedness and continuity to the site.
Having proved the existence of alignments at both winter and summer solstices, the equinox point was next investigated. (The equinox point is always halfway between the summer and winter solstice points.) Nothing, however, readily presented itself from the viewing area. A line was run along the calculated equinox path, and it was determined that it passed over an exposed granite hump in the side yard of a house on Littleton Road. Using a ladder and lanterns, it was determined that the sightline from the viewing platform passed 5 feet above the granite hump. As things stand now, the site does not appear to support a lithic equinox point.
Calculated Equinox Point
A final note about the solstice and equinox alignments: there are four apple trees growing in the field, and in the case of the summer and equinox points, these trees are in the sightlines, obscuring them. In fact, three of the four trees line up exactly along the midsummer sunrise sightline. It is unclear the significance of this, but it surely seems an odd chance that they do so.
One theory is that the meadow was owned relatively recently by someone who understood the nature of the site. The hill with the summer solstice point was owned by someone else and allowed to return to woodlands, obscuring the sunrise. The owner of the meadow then planted the tress to mark and preserve the line of the summer solstice sunrise. It makes a nice theory, but there is nothing as yet to back it up.
Please see Section 2 for the rest of the article.