  We report experiments on cohesionless granular piles to determine the effect
of construction history on the static stress distribution. The stresses beneath
the piles are monitored using a very sensitive capacitive technique. The piles
are formed either by release of granular material from a relatively small
output (localized source), or from a large diameter sieve (homogeneous rain).
The stress profiles resulting from localized source inputs have a clear stress
dip near the center of the pile while the results from an homogeneous rain show
no stress dip. We also show that the stress profiles scale simply with the pile
height. Experiments on wedges-shaped piles show the same effects but to a
lesser degree.
