Hi, Ben

Depending where you are in Eastern PA, you may get lucky and find historic
aerial photographs going back as early as the 1930s that might give some
indication of age/alignments/structures.

A couple of websites:
http://www.historicaerials.com/
http://www.pennpilot.psu.edu/

--Megan Springate

> Histarchers,
>
> I have a question that I know at least some of you have had to deal with
> in the past and would like some advice.
>
> I have a private landowner who claims to have some stones with
> astronomical alignments. Some of the stones have makings on them, many
> of which are in the same general direction. My first impression is that
> these were damaged by a plow, but I do not have a great deal of
> experience with this. I have read/heard/seen somewhere that plow marks
> tend to be V-shaped in cross-section and not U-shaped. Is this correct
> or does it depend upon the type of stone?
>
> My main issue however, is that there is a stone wall involved in this
> arrangement. The owner has located all of the deeds back to the
> beginning of records in the area and these stone walls do not fall along
> property lines. It is quite wide, approximately 10 feet. In plan, it is
> in the shape of an L with the long side on the order of 100 feet long
> and the short about half that. The angle is close to 90 degrees. The
> 'wall' is disorganized does not appear to have been well-laid, although
> there was one spot that I could see well-laid stones beneath the tumble.
> My question is, what else might this wall be? My first impression is
> that it is merely a rock wall built from the removal of stones for a
> historic field. This is partially corroborated by  reports as late as
> the 1950s that there was a corn field just to the northeast of the long
> wall. However, the L-shape doesn't seem to make sense. If a farmer was
> removing stone from the field, why would he make the L? The short side
> leads off into the woods to a point about half way between the right
> angle and a stream. To the northeast of the wall is the owners lawn and
> to the southwest is woods that leads to the stream- this area is very
> rocky.
>
> A couple of relevant notes to the puzzle:
> An elderly resident indicated that in his lifetime (nearly 100 years)
> there had not been a structure in the location of this wall.
> Local residents have collected prehistoric points in this general
> vicinity for many years.
>
> Can anyone think of references that I could look at to see some
> diagrams, photos, etc... of a variety historic stone walls- particularly
> of Eastern PA?
>
> Cheers,
> Ben Carter, PhD, RPA
>