Stone walls
Early farmers cursed the stones, knowing that they would have to extract them before plowing. The necessity of clearing the stones, as well as their sheer abundance, made them the logical material for fencing to keep the livestock out of the crops. From the seventeenth century onward, field stone walls began to honeycomb the landscape, serving both as fencing and as places to dump unwanted rock. By 1871, there were almost 14,000 miles of fencing made of stone in Rhode Island.
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