Stone Walls Of New England

Introduction

Stonewalls of New England are rich with history and archeologists are still trying to determine who may have built the first stonewalls or if our concept of when North America was first settled is wrong. There have been many different types of fences built in New England, natural debris, wood, and stone included. Stemming from these different fence types American ingenuity flourished and inventions arose. Agriculture was a big part of the fencing of America; the cultural differences of the colonists and the Indians also played a big role in the ideas of fencing and laws.

Overview of the ancient history of New England

The Wisconsin continental ice sheet retreated about 15,000 BC, causing the climate to warm, sea level to rise, and the habitat was changed from tundra to spruce-lichen. The Pleistocene mammals (mastodons, mammoths, and caribou) were attracted to the new habitat, this caused the Paleo-Indians or Big Game hunters to arrive armed with Clovis fluted point projectiles (Salisbury, 1982).

Many sites have been found in New England that shows evidence of tool-making, ritualized inter-band exchanges and other non-hunting activities.   By around 8,000 BC, the spruce-lichen forest was mostly replaced by pine and hardwoods, this evolved into other types of food causing the Paleo-Indian era to give way to the early archaic. In New England, early Archaic projectile points were found, these differ from the Paleo-Indian points because the archaic points are generally stemmed and notched for more effective specialized hunting (Salisbury, 1982).