Conference on New England Archaeology Annual Meeting

April 19th, 2008

Pierce Hall

Franklin Pierce University

Rindge, NH

"Challenging Our Assumptions: Creating and Revising

Our Ideas About Site Location"

Program

9-9:30 Registration, Coffee

9:30-10:00       A Missing Link on a Marginal Landscape
Mary Lynne Rainey, Natural Resource Group, LLC

In 1999, a data recovery carried out in Bellingham Massachusetts resulted in the discovery of a feature dated to the Early Woodland Period and interpreted as a pottery firing facility, or kiln.  A detailed technical report of the archaeological work and laboratory analyses was prepared for the Massachusetts SHPO in 2000, and a summary was published in the 2004 Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society.   The argument for data recovery in this case resulted from intermittent and short term activities at one location over an 8,000 year period that together, produced a small but diversified cultural material assemblage – hinting at criterion D, new information potential.  Pottery production was not in the research design of the data recovery program.  This paper will review the justification for this rare feature type as an example of human behavior likely to occur in areas not necessarily conducive for long term habitation.  This feature type represents craft specialization that by necessity would be situated away from the group or community center.  Criteria that can be used in the future to identify landscapes that might contain similar features are provided.

10:00-10:30     Insights into Lithic Distribution, Feature Locations and Cultural Resource Testing from the Vergennes Substation Native American Site
Christopher Donta (UMass)

Employing a standard 10-m testing interval during a Phase I archaeological identification study conducted for the Vermont Electric Power Company in northern Vermont, a low density scatter of Native American lithics was encountered in a well-developed plowzone. Because of the low artifact density from a large number of test pits, and relatively poor drainage, a finding of no further survey seemed appropriate. However, because the Vergennes area is poorly represented archaeologically, additional survey was recommended by the reviewing archaeologist. The additional work ultimately lead to intensive Phase II and subsequent Phase III surveys. More than 14,000 additional artifacts were collected, associated with multiple lithic and non-lithic activity areas, and several features. While intra-site testing generally focused on areas of high lithic density, alternative testing was conducted to seek additional features in non-lithic areas. The project provides insights into Woodland period habitation in the Otter Creek drainage, and challenges traditional assumptions of site significance, site structure, and content in poorly drained soil.

10:30-11:00 Joseph Waller and Alan Leveillee) Public Archaeology Laboratory) Assumptions, Archaeology, and the Allusive:  The Pre-Contact Native American Village Question

More than two decades of discussion and debate over the existence and nature of the Northeast’s indigenous peoples’ “village” settlement have been characteristically assumptive due in large part to a paucity of empirical archaeological evidence.    Recent excavations in Rhode Island’s coastal zone are finally providing opportunity to address the issue from sets of evidentiary data.  We present some of these data in hopes of contributing to ongoing discussions concerning the formation and structure of southern New England pre-contact Native American village life. 

11:00-11:30 Predictive Modeling in Missing Person’s Cases
Ann Marie Mires (Anna Maria College, Mass. State Medical Examiner's Office)

Current research on missing persons at the national and local level suggest that missing persons, from both intentional and accidental means, are often found within a one to one-half mile radius (National Search and Rescue Manual) or within a five mile radius (Massachusetts Data; Mires and Giordano 2004) of where they were last seen.  Utilizing data of missing person behavior, models of predictive locational analysis recommend that a search area within a five mile radius of the site where the person was last seen should be systematically and thoroughly investigated in an attempt to locate the missing person or the death scene. Why haven’t these types of models been employed in search and rescue situations or search and recovery attempts.  At the very least, this type of systematic search would rule out the immediate five mile radius around the site last seen if nothing is found (Mires 2005, 2006). Current research on body deposition from the last twenty years in Massachusetts provides patterns in behavior for various manners of death (homicide, suicide, natural, accidental, and undetermined), as well as the mode of deposition, i.e. buried or surface deposit.  Can this data be used to provide a predictive model(s) that would be implemented at the time the person goes missing in order to reduce the time between death and recovery, especially of fragile biological materials that could link the perpetrator to the victim?  Additionally, can we use this type of modeling to revisit unfound, missing person cases in an attempt to locate these unfound after such a long period of time?  Several case examples will be presented to highlight the use of this predictive model in search and recovery and in unfound missing persons’ cases.

11:30-12:00   This Old Wetu: Identifying Native Households at the Muttuck-Pauwating Site, Middleboro, Massachusetts
Craig S. Chartier (Plymouth Archaeological Rediscovery Project) 

Ongoing excavations at the Muttuck-Pauwating site in Middleboro, Massachusetts, have identified portion of over 10 Middle to Late Woodland house forms adjacent to the Nemasket River. Along with the hundreds of postmolds that comprise the outlines of the oval house forms, several other types of features such as storage pits, cache pits hearths or fire-cracked rock dumps and burials have been identified within and around the houses.  The site has a high degree of focus and excellent visibility once significant portions of topsoil have been stripped away.  Unfortunately, shovel testing in a two-meter grid fashion prior to topsoil stripping had in many cases yielded little in the way of artifactual evidence.  The distributions of what was found, sometimes as low as one or two pieces per test pit, would typically be interpreted as a “low density lithic scatter” and be written off without further testing.  Because of significant findings from the previous phases of testing, a Data Recovery plan was developed whereby lots within the most sensitive portions of the project area that would see impact into the level of the subsoil (house building envelopes, septic impact areas, and pipeline locations primarily), would be subject to complete excavation. As a result, the testing program sought to first assess and sample the quantity and spatial distribution of artifactual material within the plowzone and second to completely strip the areas to be impacted to search significant resources and burials within the subsoil.  It was found in many cases that low density distributions within the plowzone subsequently reflected what can be identified as the interior of the Native homes and the higher density areas are outside of the homes. Thus, the questions of where the Late Woodland Villages are in Southeastern Massachusetts and why haven't we found them may be more of a procedural one as opposed to a cultural one. It is possible that we have failed to identify them before now more because of our tendencies to focus on the high density areas to the neglect of those which show lower density. The findings from this project suggest a need for more open excavations even in lower density areas.

12:00-1:00       Lunch

1:00-1:30      CNEA Business Meeting

1:30-2:00         Predictions Big and Small: Searching for Illusive Maize Agriculture in Rhode Island
Pierre Morenon (Rhode Island College) and Tonya Largy (Independent Consultant)

Historical observations by Verrazzano, Champlain, Williams and others provide details about Indigenous landscapes, houses and farming between 1524 and 1636.  Why then have archaeological sites, big communities with maize dating just before European settlement, been so illusive in coastal Rhode Island?  Did our predictive models from the 1980s and 1990s lead us astray?   This paper compares past estimates from predictive modeling with a recent synopsis of all the maize kernels from archaeological sites in Rhode Island.

2:00-2:30         Archaeological Sampling in the Soils of the Champlain Valley, Vermont: Site Prediction in Problematic Soils 
Mitch Mulholland (UMass)

An archaeological survey sponsored by the Vermont Electric Power Company was conducted along the 27-mile route of a proposed electrical line, designed to bring more reliable electrical power to Northwest Vermont. A rigorous sampling design was employed that combined 10-m-interval systematic test pits in sensitive areas within the right-of-way, with more intensive 5-m interval sampling in immediate impact areas. Soil and drainage conditions, especially in Vergennes clays, provided challenges to the traditional predictive model, especially regarding assumptions about site location, soil associations, distance to water, slope and other environmental characteristics. The survey permits the comparison between different intensities of survey in similar terrain from a 5,000-test-pit sample. More than 50 archaeological sites and findspots were found, including the 1815-1840 Thorpe Brook Historic site constructed on poorly drained ground. The Vergennes Substation Native American site was found in soils that ranged from very wet to hardpan. Differences between expectations at the conclusion of one level of survey, and actual finds, are discussed.

2:30-3:00 Hard Work, Informed Guesswork, and Chance: Seeing Cultural Landscapes and Sites
John  R. Cross (Bowdoin College)

Over the past 30 years predictive models for site location have been both necessary and valuable for the practice of archaeology in North America, especially in providing a rationale for how resources of time, labor, and equipment could best be deployed in the field to yield maximum results.  However such models often contain embedded assumptions about human behavior (patterned and normative, rather than historically contingent and variable) and the nature of the archaeological record itself.  Drawing on examples from the Simpson Farm site near Merrymeeting Bay in Maine, I explore the ways in which site location and use deviate from the predictive models most commonly in use by archaeologists in the region. 

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Lunch will be available on campus or at a number of nearby restaurants. For directions to campus, please visit the FPU web site:   http://www.franklinpierce.edu/pages/Admission/directions.html

Directions for parking will be posted on campus on the day of the meeting. For any questions, contact Bob Goodby at goodbyr@franklinpierce.edu