Salon A
Session 1. New England State Archaeologists
Session 3. James Petersen Memorial Session
Session 5. Cooperation between Native Americans,
Archaeologists, and Local Officials
Session 7. U. of Massachusetts, Boston Student Papers
Session 9. Archaeoastronomy in New England
Salon B
Session 2. Contributed Papers
Session 4. New England Antiquities Research Association
Session 6. Women in Archaeology
Session 8. Down in the Valley: New Approaches to the StudyPrehistory of Delaware Valley
Fitchburg Room: Book Sales
Princeton Room: Posters and Literature
WEDNESDAY, November 8, 2006
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM: Curtiss Hoffman, Tour of the Middleboro Little League Site, Middleboro, MA
This Late/Transitional Archaic site has been under excavation by Dr. Curtiss Hoffman (who will conduct the tour) and students from Bridgewater State College since 1996. It was occupied by local groups practicing normal subsistence activities, but also by a more mobile group who used the site to assemble, prepare, and store artifacts for ceremonies (paintstones, quartz crystals, pendants, polished pebbles, arkose slabs) at other locations, notably at the well-known Wapanucket 6 and 8 sites just 3 km upriver.
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM: Massachusetts Archaeological Society
Open House at the Robbins Museum of Archaeology, Middleboro, MA
Robbins Museum of Archaeology: The successor to the Bronson Museum in Attleboro, the Robbins Museum is the premier institution for archaeological displays in Massachusetts, and features Native cultures of New England from Paleo-Indian times through the present. Displays include “A Walk Through Time”, “Wapanucket: The Glory of Ancient Middleborough”, “The Doyle Native Doll Collection”, and a display of artifacts from the Middleborough Little League Site. Admission is free, but donations are welcome!
DIRECTIONS: To Middleborough: Take Route I-495 to Exit 4 (Route 105). At the end of the exit ramp, turn onto Route 105 north (left if coming from the north, right if coming from the south) and proceed ¼ mile to first traffic light (Route 28, West Grove St.). Turn right onto Route 28 and proceed down the hill until you see a shopping plaza on your right (Hannaford Market). Turn left at the “Fields of Dreams” sign and follow the dirt road a short distance, and park by the second ballfield. The Little League site is in the trees to your left. To the Robbins Museum, return to Route 28 and turn right onto Route 105, and proceed through the next traffic light (Main St./Wareham St.). Go one block further (Jackson St., police station on corner). Turn right onto Jackson St. and park in the lot on the left; the Robbins Museum is across the street.
˜˜˜˜˜˜
THURSDAY, November 9, 2006
TOUR DAY
10:00 AM – 11:30 AM: Tour of the Crowd House Site and Sturbridge Graphite Mine,
Tantiusques Reservation, Sturbridge, MA
Crowd Site: This is a 19th century farm site occupied by a family of one of the miners, Robert Crowd. The Crowds were an African-American/Native American family, and the study of their household is being used by Old Sturbridge Village to support a new exhibit under development at the museum. This tour will also be led by Ed Hood, and both tours will proceed in rain or poor weather (but not if there is snow cover). Please dress accordingly – this is a wooded site with rough terrain.
Sturbridge Graphite Mine: This is one of the oldest historic mining sites in North America. Originally used by Native Americans to obtain pure graphite, the mine was operated by the English briefly in the 1660s. Its most prosperous era of operation was from 1829 until 1860, when it was owned by Frederick Tudor, “The Ice King”. Most of the remains visible at the mine date to this period, including extensive evidence for the hand-drilled blasting holes used to break up overburden rock in the mining process. This tour will be led by Ed Hood, Director of Research, Collections, and Library at Old Sturbridge Village.
DIRECTIONS: To Sturbridge, from Fitchburg: Take Route 2 east to Exit 23 (Route I-190). Take I-190 south to the merge with I-290 (Exit 1). Continue south on I-290 to Exit 7 (I-90, Mass. Turnpike). Take I-90 west one exit to Exit 9 (Route I-84). From I-84 west, take Exit 1 (the third exit from the Mass Pike). Turn right at the stop sign onto Mashapaug Road heading south and follow for 1.5 mi. Turn right onto Leadmine Road and follow for 0.9 mi (total distance = 50.3 miles). An optional car-pool will leave for the site at 9:30 from Old Sturbridge Village (located on Route 20, off Exit 4 west on I-84). Meet at the passenger drop-off area in front of the Museum Visitor Center.
11:30 AM – 12:30 PM: Lunch at (or near) Old Sturbridge Village
12:30 PM - 4:00 PM: Visit Old Sturbridge Village (Thursday Tours by pre-registration only; 1 hour guided
tour of the village starts at 2:00 PM)
Old Sturbridge Village: In the years 1790 to 1840 a new nation took shape. In rural towns across New England, ordinary people worked to better their lives, build strong communities, apply new technologies, and define the meaning of democracy. Learn their story at Old Sturbridge Village as you journey into the past. Attendees at the ESAF conference who pre-register are offered a reduced rate admission. A one-hour tour will be led by Ed Hood, highlighting some of the museum’s exhibits based on archaeological research. This tour will meet and leave from the entrance to the ticketing area at the museum.
DIRECTIONS: To Fitchburg: Coming from the south or east, take Route I-495 north to Exit 29 (Route 2). Take Route 2 west to Exit 28 (Route 31, Princeton Rd.). Turn left at the end of the exit ramp and cross Route 2. The hotel entrance is just beyond on your right (total distance from Middleborough = 84.5 miles). Coming from the south and west, take the Mass. Pike (I-90) to Exit 10 (Route I-290). Take I-290 north through Worcester to the merge with Route I-190 (Exit 19). Continue on I-190 north to Exit 8 (Route 2). Take Route 2 west and follow as above. Coming from the north and west, take Route I-91 south to Massachusetts Exit 27 (Route 2). Take Route 2 east to Exit 28 (Route 31, Princeton Rd.). Turn right at the end of the exit ramp and again right into the hotel entrance.
1:00 PM – 4:00 PM: Book Room Set-up
5:00 PM – 9:00 PM: Registration
4:00 PM – 7:00 PM: Dinner (on you own)
7:00 PM – 9:30 PM: President’s Reception (Hospitality Suite)
WE WISH TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE RECENT PASSING OF LONGTIME FRIENDS AND COLLEGUES OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL COMMUNITY
WE DEDICATE THE FOLLOWING SESSIONS ON THEIR BEHALF
NEW ENGLAND STATE ARCHAEOLOGISTS
SESSION 1.
Douglas F. Jordan
Douglas F. Jordan received his BA from Dartmouth College in 1949. He later earned his MA and PhD in anthropology from Harvard University. Prior to his appointment to the University of Connecticut in 1963, he was an archaeologist for the National Park Service, and at the Florida State Museum. At the University of Connecticut, he accepted a position teaching in the Anthropology Department, and was also appointed the first State Archaeologist of Connecticut. In addition, he served as Curator of the university’s anthropological collections.
He served for more than two decades as the State Archaeologist, and was the most visible leader of the professional and amateur archaeologists in the state. He served the Archaeological Society of Connecticut consecutively as Program Chairman, Newsletter Editor, and President. He was also a longtime member of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society. His work with the amateur community set the stage for both archaeological societies to develop an important working relationship between professional and avocational archaeologists in New England. He was responsible for attracting the Norris L. Bull Collection of pre-Contact and Contact Native American artifacts to UConn.
His intellectual and research interests fell into two distinct categories. The first is the prehistoric archaeology of eastern North America, and New England in particular. He excavated and conducted research at the Bull Brook, Schwartz, Woodchuck Knoll and Hollister Sites among many. His second, but not lesser, interest was in primitive technology – from stone tools to ceramics to metallurgy, from watercraft to weapons to cooking vessels.
He was a prominent and active instructor of undergraduates and graduates. He was personally responsible for the education of an entire generation of archaeologist, many of which are active professionally in the field today. Doug directed the UConn summer archaeological field school teaching archaeological techniques and methods for more than a quarter of a century.
Nicholas F. Bellantoni
JAMES PETERSEN MEMORIAL
SESSION 3.
JAMES PETERSEN
It was in Anguilla that I first met the archaeologist James Petersen, who has been shot dead, after being robbed, in Brazil aged 51. I was an unknown newcomer to Caribbean archaeology, but he instantly suggested I should come out to visit his site, invited me to share dinner and offered to supply me with pictures of artifacts which I might find useful. James, chair of the anthropology department at the University of Vermont (UVM), had spent the last decade working in the Amazon near Manaus. His ceramic expertise enabled him to recognize the existence of 8,000-year-old settlements - and transform assumptions about prehistoric Amazonian life.
Poor Amazon soils had led to the belief that the region was a pristine habitat and that the indigenous people were essentially nomadic. But James, and his former student, Florida University professor Michael Heckenberger, studied deep layers of terra preta do Indio (Indian dark earth), and demonstrated that the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Amazon had cultivated intensively. The intricate pottery found in association with the terra preta do Indio convinced him of the existence of ancient civilizations along the Amazon with complex agricultural practices, of which today's small scale native settlements are the remnants.
James's archaeological interests extended from the United States, down into the Amazon region. He worked for many years in the Caribbean, and in Montserrat, had co-directed investigations over several seasons before the volcanic eruptions started in 1995.
He was also an expert on the archaeology of the northeastern US, and championed the Abenaki tribe in Vermont. He twice testified for the tribe last year during senate hearings on a bill, which would grant tribal recognition.
Born in Bristol, Connecticut, his parents had met while studying at UVM, from which he was to graduate in 1979. After doctoral studies - on the prehistoric people of Vermont - at the University of Pittsburgh, he founded the Archaeology Research Center at the University of Maine, where he was a professor from 1983 to 1997. In 1997, he returned to UVM.
A popular teacher, James wrote dozens of papers, articles, and book chapters. He was also an avid book collector, loved traveling and jazz music.
Quetta Kaye
ARCHAEOASTRONOMY IN NEW ENGLAND
SESSION 9.
JAMES W. MAVOR Jr.
It was with deep sorrow that, we learned of Jim Mavor’s death on August 19, 2006. A quiet guiding light in NEARA for twenty-five years, Jim awakened us to a new appreciation of the mysteries of astronomy. He explored the significance of the emerging discipline of Archaeoastronomy and gave us a fresh perspective on the meaning of our enigmatic stone works. In close collaboration with Byron Dix, their scientific investigations revealed an understanding of how the cycles of heaven played a key role in Native Americans’ perception of their place in nature and their sacred landscape. Their work culminated in the 1989 publication of Manitou, the Sacred Landscape of New England’s Native Civilization. Jim and Byron continued their joint work until Byron’s death in 1993.
Jim’s expanding range of interests is evidenced by the continued appearance of his articles in the NEARA Journal, including this posthumous joint article with Ted Ballard in current volume.
Born James Watt Mayor, Jr. on January 18, 1923 in Schenectady, N.Y, he attended Union College before moving to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1944 in naval architecture and marine engineering.
During World War II Jim served in the U.S. Navy in the South Pacific from 1944 to 1946 and then pursued graduate studies at MIT. After receiving a master's degree from MIT in naval architecture in 1950, Jim taught as an assistant professor of marine engineering at the U.S. Naval Academy from 1950 to 1953, when he joined the faculty at Northeastern University as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering. He was promoted to associate professor in 1957 and taught at the university until 1961. He also served as an instructor in naval architecture and as a consultant to Bethlehem Steel at its Quincy shipyard from 1957 to 1959.
He joined the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution staff as a consultant in 1957. In 1959 he moved to a casual basis as an associate in applied physics, and in 1961 became a full-time employee as a research associate in applied physics. As research specialist he was a leading designer of the deep sea submersible Alvin.
Doug, Jim and Jim the world is a better place because of the knowledge and understanding you have shared with all of us!
73rd Annual Meeting November 8-12, 2006
FRIDAY, November 10, 2006
MORNING SESSIONS
7:30 AM - 5:00 PM: Registration
8:00 AM - 8:30 AM: Opening Remarks
W. Jack Hranicky, President ESAF
Curtiss Hoffman, ESAF Program Chairman
Tonya Largy, MAS President
Daniel Lorraine, NEARA President
8:00 AM - 5:00 PM: Poster Sessions (Princeton Room)
8:30 AM - 5:00 PM: Book Room Open (Fitchburg Room)
8:30 AM - 12:00 PM: SESSION 1: (Salon A)
New England State Archaeologists (Chair, Brona Simon)
The State Archaeologists of each of the New England states will give reports on recent archaeological discoveries and archaeological programs in their states. Even though the New England States are small in size, they are large in the depth and complexity of their archaeology. The presentations will be geographical in order, from Down East to the southwest.
8:40 AM - 9:10 AM: Arthur E. Spiess, Maine Historic Preservation Commission
9:10 AM - 9:40 AM: Richard Boisvert, New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources
9:40 AM - 10:10 AM: Giovanna Peebles, Vermont Division for Historic Preservation
10:10 AM - 10:40 AM: Brona Simon, Massachusetts Historical Commission
10:40 AM - 11:00 AM: BREAK
11:00 AM - 11:30 AM: Paul Robinson, Rhode Island Historic Preservation & Heritage Commission
11:30 AM - 12:00 PM: Nicholas F. Bellantoni, Connecticut Archaeology Center, UCONN
David Poirier, Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism
12:00 PM: Closing remarks, Brona Simon
8:30 AM - 12:00 PM: SESSION 2: (Salon B)
Contributed Papers (Chair, W. Jack Hranicky)
8:40 AM - 9:00 AM: W. Jack Hranicky, There is Clovis, Then, There is Not Clovis
9:00 AM - 9:30 AM: Carolyn Dillian, Charles Bello, Steven Shackley,
Mid-Atlantic Super-Long Distance Obsidian Exchange
9:30 AM - 10:00 AM: Brian L. Fritz, GIS Based Distance-decay Modeling of the Cultural Distribution of
Shriver and Loyalhanna Chert
10:00AM - 10:30 AM: Gary D. Shaffer, A Study of Decorated Soapstone Vessels from the
Lower Susquehanna Valley
10:30 AM - 10:50 AM: BREAK
10:50 AM - 11:20 AM: Suzanne Wall and Bruce McAleer, Steatite Quarrying and Utilization of Altered
Metamorphic Rocks in Eastern New England.
11:20 AM - 11:50 AM: Ilene Grossman-Bailey, Lauren Cook,
A Pipeline to the Past or Six Archaic Sites Narrowly Considered
11:50 AM - 12:00 PM: Closing remarks, W. Jack Hranicky
12:00 AM - 1:00 PM: Lunch (on you own)
12:00 AM - 1:00 PM: ESAF Board Meeting and Lunch
FRIDAY, November 10, 2006
AFTERNOON SESSIONS
1:00 PM - 5:00 PM: SESSION 3: (Salon A)
James Petersen Memorial Session (Chair, Mark McConaughy)
1:10 PM - 1:30 PM: Mark Mc Conaughy, Paleoindian Occupations in the Northeast
1:30 PM - 1:50 PM: James W. Bradley and Jeff Boudreau,
Re-assessing Wapanucket: Paleo Indians in Southeast Massachusetts
1:50 PM - 2:10 PM: John G. Crock and Francis W. Robinson, IV
Returning to the Leicester Flats, Salisbury Vermont: Preliminary Results of 2006 Excavations at the Site Where a Young James Petersen Found Archaeology
2:10 PM - 2:30 PM: Ellen R. Cowie, Indigenous Subsistence and Settlement Practices in Northern
New England During the Woodland Period:
The Enduring Contributions of James B. Petersen
2:30 PM - 2:50 PM: Frances L. Stewart and Ellen R. Cowie, Dietary Indications for a Possible
St. Lawrence Iroquoian Site in Northern New England
2:50 PM - 3:10 PM: BREAK
3:10 PM - 3:30 PM: Roland Tremblay, The Origin of Saint Lawrence Iroquoian Pottery in Northern
New England: New Data on an Old Question
3:30 PM - 3:50 PM: Michael Heckenberger & Joshua Toney, Culture History, Practice, and Neo-Boasian Anthropology in the Work of Jim Petersen.
3:50 PM - 4:10 PM: Jim Tuck, The Archaeology of Ferryland, Newfoundland, until 1696
4:10 PM - 4:30 PM: Jill Bouck and James B. Richardson III,
The Mayhew Wampanoag Thunderbird: Discovery And Significance
4:30 PM - 5:00 PM: Closing remarks, Mark Mc Conaughy
1:00 PM - 5:00 PM: SESSION 4: (Salon B)
New England Antiquities Research Association (Chair, Daniel Lorraine)
1:10 PM - 1:35 PM: Colgate Gilbert, Standing Stones, Observatories, Hill Farms and Indian Agroforesty;
A Look at the Sweetser and Thayer Sites of Franklin County, MA
1:35 PM - 2:00 PM: Peter Waksman, The Distribution of Rock Piles in Middlesex County, MA
2:00 PM - 2:25 PM: James Egan, What’s a Rhode Island Stone-Ender doing in Connecticut?
2:25 PM - 2:50 PM: T. Fohl and K. Leonard,
Similarities of Ceremonial Structures in New England and Mesoamerica
2:50 PM - 3:05 PM: BREAK
3:05 PM - 3:30PM: Vance R. Tiede, Interpreting the Gungywamp:
Some Anomalous Evidence and its Implications
3:30 PM - 4:00 PM: Suzanne Carlson, How Was it Built? The Construction of the Newport Tower
4:00 PM - 4:50 PM: Scott Wolter, Compelling New Evidence for the Kensington
and Spirit Pond Rune Stones
4:50 PM - 5:00 PM: Closing remarks, Daniel Lorraine
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM: Dinner (on you own)
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM: Ted Timreck, Hidden Landscapes: A Northeastern Ceremonial Landscape
(Film Presentation)
8:00 PM - 11:00 PM: Canadian Hospitality Event
SATURDAY, November 11, 2006
MORNING SESSIONS
7:30 AM - 5:00 PM: Registration
8:00 AM - 5:00 PM: Poster Sessions
8:30 AM - 5:00 PM: Book Room Open
8:30 AM - 12:00 PM: SESSION 5: (Salon A)
Cooperation between Native Americans, Archaeologists, and Local Officials
Open Panel Discussion, (participants)
Doug Harris, Narragansett Indian Nation (Chair)
Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, Wampanoag Indian Nation
Curtiss Hoffman, Bridgewater State College
Alan Leveillee, Public Archaeology Laboratory
Tim Fohl, NEARA
Fredrick Martin, NEARA
8:30 AM - 10:10 AM: SESSION 6: (Salon B)
Missing in the Past: Improving Analysis by Incorporating Women’s Lives
(Chair, Joyce Clements)
8:40 AM - 9:00 AM: Joyce M. Clements, Missing the Power in a Praying Place
9:00 AM - 9:20 AM: Ellen Ingmanson, Missing Women in Archaeology: Perspective and Implications
9:20 AM - 9:40 AM: Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood, How Reform Women Transformed American Culture
from the 19th century into the 20th century
9:40 AM - 10:00 AM: Maryanne MacLeod, Forgotten Women:
Evidence of Women's Work at the Cedar Swamp Site in Westboro
10:00 AM - 10:20 AM: BREAK
10:20 AM – 10:40 AM: SPECIAL SESSION
Richard A. Boisvert and Edna M. Feighner,
The Colebrook Paleoindian Site Revisited: The 2006 Investigations at 27-CO-38.
10:40 AM - 12:00 PM: SESSION 7: (Salon B)
University of Massachusetts, Boston, Student Papers (Chair, Susan Jacobucci)
10:50 AM - 11:10 AM: Susan A. Jacobucci, Constant Changes: A Study of Anthropogenic Vegetation
Using Pollen and Charcoal on the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation Reservation
11:10 AM - 11:30 AM: Diana S. Gallagher, The Privy and the Worm: Parasites, Health and Sanitation
11:30 AM - 11:50 AM: Frank Carvino, From Coast to Consumer: Artifact as Commodity
11:50 AM - 12:00 PM: Closing remarks, Susan A. Jacobucci
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM: Lunch (on your own)
SATURDAY, November 11, 2006
AFTERNOON SESSIONS
1:00 PM - 5:00 PM: SESSION 8: (Salon A)
Down in the Valley: New Approaches to the study of Delaware Valley Prehistory (Chair, Gregory Lattanzi)
1:10 PM - 1:40 PM: Gregory D. Lattanzi, The Provenience of Pre-Contact Copper Artifacts:
Implications for a Northeastern Regional Exchange Network
1:40 PM - 2:10 PM: R. Dustin Cushman, The Context of Death: Burial Ritualism in the Delaware Valley
2:10 PM - 2:40 PM: Ruth Dickau and Jeff Harbison, Tim Messner (presenter) Starch Grain Analysis:
Methodology and Applications in the Northern and Middle Atlantic Regions
2:40 PM - 3:10 PM: George Pevarnik, A Polarizing View of Middle Woodland Ceramics from the
Delaware Valley
3:10 PM - 3:40 PM: Joe Schuldenrein, Geoarchaeological Systematics of the Delaware Valley
Landscape: Regional and Extra-regional Correlations
3:40 PM - 4:00 PM: BREAK
4:00 PM - 4:30 PM: William Schindler, Experimental Perspectives on Prehistoric Fishing
4:30 PM - 5:00 PM: Joe Gingerich, R. Michael Stewart (presenter)
Picking up the Pieces: New Paleoindian Research in the Upper Delaware Valley
5:00 PM: Closing remarks, R.Michael Stewart
1:00 PM - 5:00 PM: SESSION 9: (Salon B)
Archaeoastronomy in New England (Chair, Fred Martin)
1:10 PM - 1:50 PM: Ted Timreck, A Celebration for James Mavor
(Film Presentation)
1:50 PM - 2:20 PM: Judith Young, The Major Lunar Standstill of 2006 in New England
and Around the World
2:20 PM - 2:50 PM: Frederick W. Martin, GPS Mapping of King Philip’s Rocks in Southeastern Massachusetts: Lunar Signal above Noise and Archaic Astronomical Date
2:50 PM - 3:20 PM: Edwin Ted Ballard, For Want of a Nail: Observed Classes of Sightlines in
New England
3:20 PM - 3:45 PM: BREAK
3:45 PM - 4:15 PM: Frederick F. Meli, A Winter Solstice Alignment at the Queen’s Fort in Rhode Island
4:15 PM - 4:45 PM: C. Thomas Paul, The Hammonasset Line: A Major Winter Solstice
Marker in Connecticut
4:45 PM - 5:00 PM: Closing remarks, Frederick W. Martin
EVENING ACTIVITIES
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM: Book Room, take down
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM: ESAF Membership Meeting
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM: Cocktail Hour
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM: Banquet (Salon C)
8:00 PM – 9:00 PM: Keynote Address:
Brian Robinson, Unique Potential of the Bull Brook Paleo-Indian Site
The Bull Brook site has been one of the cornerstones of Northeastern Paleo-Indian studies since the early 1950s, with changing importance as new questions developed. Recently the site has served as an extreme example of a large Paleo-Indian site with a ring shaped settlement pattern suggesting an organized event. The original excavators proposed that the site represented a large gathering or people almost 50 years ago, but the potential was only slowly recognized by the professional community. Recent efforts to evaluate the Bull Brook circle are focused on detailed reconstruction of mapping, field methods, cataloging, lithic analysis and distributional studies. A significant but little known body of records is available with which to test spatial distributions within the site, drawing on the memories and skills of the original excavators and every scrap of original documentation. The work is not yet finished but the pieces are fitting together at an increasing rate. Many critical players and threads of evidence allow a detailed look at a site the size of four football fields, discovered before CRM and before spatial characteristics of “Paleo-Indian hotspots” were even a topic of interest. Half the site was destroyed by sand and gravel activities within three years of the first avocational excavations. This presentation is about some of the remarkable circumstances that allow new questions to be asked 45 years after excavations were completed.
SUNDAY, November 9, 2006
NO MEETING PAPERS ARE SCHEDULED
10:00 AM – 1:00 PM: Rockhouse Rockshelter Field Trip
Rockhouse Rockshelter: Glaciers created the rock shelter that gives the Reservation its name. Its large size and height and its southern exposure made the Rock House an excellent winter camp for Native Americans. The site was also located near two long Native American footpaths, suggesting that it may also have been a trail camp and meeting place. Following the arrival of colonists in the mid-seventeenth century, area forests were gradually cleared for farming. In 1866, pastures around the Rock House were added to a 281-acre farm on Ragged Hill Road owned by William Adams, whose family would tend the land for many generations. Today, a forest of pine and mixed hardwoods has reclaimed the landscape.
To Rockhouse Reservation, from Fitchburg: Take Route 2 east to Exit 23 (Route I-190). Take I-190 south to the merge with I-290 (Exit 1). Continue south on I-290 to Exit 7 (I-90, Mass. Turnpike). Take I-90 west to exit 8 and pick up Route 32 north towards Ware. Route 32 joins Route 9 in Ware. Stay on combined Route 32/9 and, when routes separate, follow Route 9 east for 1.1 mi. to the parking area (12 cars) and entrance on the left (total distance = 68.5 miles). Alternatively (if you like country roads), take Route 31 south from the hotel entrance (turn right) and continue through Princeton, Holden, Paxton, and Spencer to Route 9. Turn right (west) onto Route 9 and continue through East Brookfield, Brookfield, and West Brookfield past Brookhaven Lake on your right. The entrance will be about half a mile further on the right (total distance = 41.8 miles).
CONFERENCE SPEAKERS
ABSTRACTS & BIOGRAPHIES
Ballard, Edwin C. (NEARA, MAS)
Using observations recorded at a site in Sharon MA from a class of “U”-shaped laid-up stone constructs, located above surface on backland high ground and facing horizon positions of the Sun and Big Dipper at key positions in their annual cycle, I will present the case for their use by Native Americans in a ritual context. This site, one of over a dozen similar sites with a total of 57 constructs I have previously observed and reported since 1988 in south central and southeastern New England, has a verified Native American presence and a record of use dating back to the Late Archaic. The astronomy of these sites will be connected to recorded Algonquian ritual.
Ted Ballard has been a member of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society for 15 years, is a past Trustee and is currently Treasurer. He was the Research Director of NEARA for 10 years, has a BSME from Brown University, an MBA from Boston University, and is a retired Senior Member of the Technical Staff of Texas Instruments, Inc. An early report on his work may be found in the Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society , volume 60, number 2, fall 1999, pages 38-54; or at www.neara.org/ballard/wantofanail.htm.
Bellantoni, Nick (Archaeology Center at the University of Connecticut)
Nick serves as archaeologist for the state of Connecticut. His office is with the State Museum of Natural History and Archaeology Center at the University of Connecticut
Boisvert, Richard A. (NH Division of Historical Resources) Edna M. Feighner, (NH Division of
Historical Resources)
The Colebrook Paleoindian site was defined in 1997 on the basis of a 1 by 2 meter excavation unit during survey for the PNGTS gas pipeline. The 2006 NH SCRAP field school enlarged upon this investigation to obtain a broader paleoenvironmental and cultural context. A block excavation centered on the original test pit revealed additional features and manufacturing debris relating to fluted point manufacture. A preliminary assessment of the site’s place in northern New England Paleoindian research is presented.
Richard Boisvert: BA Anthropology from Beloit College, MA & PhD in Anthropology from the U of KY, research in Ohio Valley, Texas, France, Quebec and New Hampshire; employed with NH Division of Historical Resources since 1987, State Archaeologist since 2003; major research interests include lithic technology, Paleoindian and Public Archaeology.
Edna Feighner: BA in Anthropology from UMASS Boston, have worked in Cultural Resource Management for over 25 years, currently completing MA in Historical Archaeology Program at UMASS Boston, have been employed with NH Division of Historical Resources since 2001 as Review and Compliance Coordinator/Archaeologist; major research interests include faunal and ceramic analysis, Contact Period occupations and Public Archaeology.
Bouck, Jill (Martha's Vineyard Museum) James B. Richardson III (Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the University of Pittsburgh)
The recent inventory by Jill Bouck of the business account books in the collections of the Martha's Vineyard Museum discovered an extraordinary volume. Incised on the cover of the account book is a spectacular Thunderbird motif. The account book was kept by Matthew Mayhew (1723-1799), who was the direct descendant of Thomas Mayhew Sr. (1592-1682) who bought Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket and the Elizabeth Islands in 1641 and sent his son with settlers to Martha's Vineyard in 1642. The account book has 20 pages with 95 names of Colonial and 7 Wampanoag buyers. The paper pages have the watermark of Thomas Buddgen, Darford Mills, Kent, England where he manufactured paper between 1770-1800. Matthew operated a store and tavern in Edgartown and at that time there was a substantial Wampanoag population on Chappaquiddick, Christiantown and Aquinnah.On the stiff hide cover of the Mayhew account book there is the incised figure of a bird, with head, wings, body, feet and split tail feathers. This is the only known hide representation of the Thunderbird motif that we know of. It was a widespread religious symbol of the Algonquian of the Great Lakes and northeastern North America. The discovery of the Thunderbird on the Mayhew account book and its significance will be discussed.
James B. Richardson III (Ph.D. Univ. of Illinois 1969) is Curator Emeritus (2006) of the Section of Anthropology, Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Professor of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh. He came to Pitt in 1967 and became part-time at the Carnegie in 1978. He has conducted extensive research on maritime adaptations, Holocene climate change and the impact of natural disasters on the coast of Peru. He has conducted similar research on Martha's Vineyard and in western Pennsylvania.
Bradley, James W. (ARCHNET) Jeff Boudreau, (MAS)
Since first reported in American Antiquity (1964), Wapanucket has been one of the best known Paleo Indian sites in southern New England. The site is located in Middleboro, MA and contains components that span virtually all of the region’s long and complex cultural history. Given its artifactual similarities to the Bull Brook site, Wapanucket has usually been assigned to the Early Paleo (Gainey) period. Recent re-examination of the assemblage indicates that, with its preponderance of non-local lithics, Wapanucket may have been one of the region’s earliest Paleo Indian sites. However, the range of projectile point styles recovered from different loci suggests that Paleo Indians also used this location at several times during the period 13,000 to 10,000 years ago.
Carlson, Suzanne (NEARA)
This paper presents an architects view of the “specifications” for the construction of the controversial Newport Tower in Newport, Rhode Island.
Suzanne Carlson is NEARA Publications Chair and a practicing architect- architectural historian with over 35 years of experience in historic preservation.
Carvino, Frank (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
Through the identification of smuggled goods, within a colonial New England context, we can study eighteenth-century economic and social changes. Information drawn from the artifacts recovered at the Narbonne House, located in Salem Massachusetts as well as other eighteenth-century New England sites provide the context for this paper. In addition, three values (two identified by Marx 1967: and a third identified by Orser 1996) will be applied to artifacts identified as smuggled commodities. These terms illustrate the fluid and dynamic relationship between individuals, material goods, and the socio-economic system they occupy. Examined along side patterns of consumption we can then ask questions like; to what reason can we significantly attribute this consumer behavior? Can this behavior be identified in the artifact record? Lastly, can we determine a dominant cause, economically or socially, that allowed smuggling to be sustained in the British American colonies during the eighteenth century?
Frank M. Carvino was born in Pennsylvania, received a dual Bachelors in History and Anthropology from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania in 1999. Currently completing his thesis requirements for the M.A. program in Historical Archaeology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Previous field work includes; historic and prehistoric sites located in Florida, Georgia, Maine, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Forthcoming publications [2007] include a site report for the National Park Service and a collaborative publication based on a session of the 2006 Society for American Archaeology annual meeting
Clements, Joyce M. (Gray and Pape, Inc.)
Many scholars have written about the Praying Indian communities of southern Massachusetts and some have considered Praying Indian women’s lives in broader conversations about cultural change. Historical studies have explored the changing dynamics of intimate relationship and transformations in gendered land-use patterns that followed European colonization. These kinds of histories inform archaeological interpretation because they identify the larger social matrix in which human interaction with material culture took place. What is missing from these histories is an exploration of colonial power manifested as violence against Native American women. Such kinds of analyses are difficult, because acts of physical abuse have to be read into the texts: colonial document writers rarely confess them explicitly. Historical texts from Ponkapoag, however, provide intimations to physical abuse and offer a place to reconsider the play of power in Praying Indian communities.
After working in cultural resource management for many years, Clements developed an interest in the archaeology & history of women’s lives in New England, which culminated in a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies. Clements has taught in Women’s Studies and Anthropology programs, but is currently working in crm in southern New England. Today’s paper draws on Clements’s dissertation research to address the intersection of colonial power and women’s lives in the Christian Native American community of Ponkapoag, Massachusetts.
Cowie, Ellen R. (University of Maine, Farmington)
The methodologies and perspectives Jim Petersen brought to northern New England archaeology allows us a detailed look at many aspects of past Native American lifeways, from the smallest detail of ceramic manufacture to the complexities of the transition to maize horticulture. This paper focuses on the adoption of maize by Native populations in northern New England and the mechanisms of change associated with this event. Several Late Woodland period settlements located on the Connecticut and Missisquoi rivers in Vermont and the Saco, Androscoggin and Kennebec rivers in Maine bear directly on these issues. Evidence from these settlements suggests that with the transition to maize horticulture, native settlements were transformed in terms of their size, duration of occupation and overall character. The adoption of maize horticulture coincides with shifts in settlement to increasing sedentism and social aggregation with implications of change in the social dynamics of native communities.
Ellie Cowie is the director of the University of Maine at Farmington Archaeology Research Center and Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences and Business Department at UMF. Ellie started her career in Northeastern archaeology in 1983 at Munsungun Lake and in 1986 began working for Jim Petersen at the UMF Archaeology Research Center. She became the director of the Archaeology Research Center after Jim's departure in 1997 and received her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 2002. Her dissertation research focused on the Contact period Norridgewock villages in Maine. Ellie and Jim collaborated on research relating to northeastern native ceramic technologies and the adoption of maize horticulture by native peoples.
Crock, John G. (University of Vermont) Francis W. Robinson, IV (University of Vermont)
The Otter Creek portion of the Lake Champlain Basin has played a formative role in the history of northeastern archaeology and was central to Jim Petersen’s personal archaeological chronology. Around the time William Ritchie was excavating at the KI site on the Otter Creek and redefining the Vergennes Phase of the Late Archaic, a young Jim Petersen was collecting artifacts along a tributary downstream. The University of Vermont Consulting Archaeology Program recently completed data recovery for a utility corridor project at the multicomponent Leicester Flats site, the first systematic archaeology conducted at a site that helped Jim decide what he wanted to be when he grew up.
Cushman, R. Dustin (Temple University)
This paper discusses the preliminary findings of the author's dissertation, which entails a re-examination of Late Woodland (900AD to 1620AD) and Contact (1620AD-) Native American burials from the Delaware Valley. Statistical analyses such as principal component analysis and correspondence analysis were used to infer patterns within and across sites that detail the extent to which burial rites vary and may relate to different groups, communities or clans within Delaware society. Such patterns also add to a better understanding of early Delaware cultural systems and how they may relate to later historic divisions of Lenape and Munsee Delaware.
R. Dustin Cushman holds a B.A. in Anthropology from George Mason University, a M.A. in Anthropology from Temple University and is currently a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Temple University.
Dickau, Ruth (University of Calgary) Jeff Harbison (URS Corp. & Temple University)
Tim Messner (presenter),
Over the course of the last decade, our understanding of human/plant interactions in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic has increased substantially. Advances in archaeobotanical analyses have enabled researchers to reevaluate, and in many instances reinterpret, long held conventional understandings of prehistory in our region. In spite of these methodological and conceptual improvements, there remain many unanswered questions concerning the exploitation and adoption of “wild” and domesticated plant resources. For instance, many potentially important economic plant species have been poorly represented or are invisible in the macrobotanical record (e.g. roots, tubers, rhizomes, chestnuts, acorns and beechnuts). Starch grain analysis is a rapidly developing discipline that has the potential to significantly augment the archaeobotanical database, throughout the Eastern Woodlands, by providing direct evidence of plant use in spite of preservation biases. This chapter explores the many facets of starch research, highlighting the methodological and theoretical applications for the region, and reports on recent findings in the Upper Delaware Valley of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Ruth Dickau was awarded her Ph.D. in 2005 by Temple University, Philadelphia. Her research interests include the origins of agriculture, Central and South American archaeology, Neotropical archaeobotany, and starch grain analysis. She is currently a SSHRC post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary.
Jeffrey Harbison has been working in Cultural Resource Management in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States since 1990. His research interests include Woodland period subsistence issues in the Northeast, geomorphology, and agricultural origins. He has participated in ongoing research projects in the Llanos of Venezuela, and exploring the origins of neo-tropical agriculture in Guererro, Mexico. He is currently pursuing a Masters degree in anthropology at Temple University, and is employed as a field supervisor for URS Corporation in New Jersey.
Dillian, Carolyn (Princeton University), Charles A. Bello (CRCG), and
M. Steven Shackley (University of California, Berkeley)
Preliminary analysis of a small sample of obsidian artifacts from archaeological contexts in the mid-Atlantic region has yielded intriguing and tentative trade connections to western U.S. obsidian sources. Ongoing research aimed at increasing the sample of artifacts for analysis has resulted in exciting suggestions that cross-continental down-the-line exchange may have existed in prehistory. However, due to the extreme distances covered by the exchange networks proposed here, archaeological provenience, in addition to geologic provenance, is of utmost concern. A critical examination of archaeological provenience and geochemical sourcing as tools for understanding prehistoric exchange remains valuable in ongoing archaeological dialogue.
Carolyn Dillian is a Post-Doctoral Lecturer in the Interdisciplinary Writing Program at Princeton University. She received her Ph.D. in 2002 from the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Dillian's research investigates the procurement and exchange of stone tool materials, with particular emphasis on geochemical sourcing of obsidian. She is currently working on studies of long distance exchange in North America, and trade and population movements during the Holocene in Kenya. She is the former President of the International Association for Obsidian Studies and currently holds the position of Bulletin editor.
Charles A. Bello holds a Master’s degree from New York University. Mr. Bello has served two terms as President of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey and has been the editor of the ASNJ’s journal for the past twenty years, having published close to 2,000 pages. He has served ten years as past Treasurer of the Eastern States Archaeological Federation, and currently is the archaeologist for the Tinicum Township, Bucks County, PA Historic Preservation Commission. His articles have been published in the journals of the Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference, the Eastern States Archaeological Federation, the Archaeological Society of New Jersey, among others.
Steven Shackley is a Professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Berkeley, and Director of the Berkeley Archaeological X-ray Fluorescence Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. in 1990 from the Anthropology Department at Arizona State University. Dr. Shackley's research focuses on the prehistory of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico. He is currently working on excavations at McEuen Cave in Arizona, and a long-term survey of northeastern Sonora and northern Chihuahua obsidian sources. Relevant published books include 'Obsidian: Geology and Archaeology in the North American Southwest' (University of Arizona Press, 2005) and 'Archaeological Obsidian Studies: Method and Theory' (Springer/Plenum Publishing 1998)
Egan, James (NEARA)
In 1997,the remains of a colonial house were found high atop a cliff in southeastern Connecticut. The 6-foot-wide hearth, massive chimney base, foundation, and entrance step are all still visible. Architecturally, the building is a “stone-ender” (as opposed to “center–chimney”) which is a style predominantly found in RI. Jim Whittall purported that this was the Trading Post of one of RI’s first settlers, Benedict Arnold. Benedict helped settle Providence with his father, William Arnold, in1636, and became the richest man in RI with his trading deals. In 1663, King Charles appointed him to be the first Governor of RI. (It was his great-grandson who was the infamous traitor in the Revolutionary War.) But what would a RI settler’s house be doing in Connecticut? Clues can be found by studying the history of the RI-Connecticut border and Indian-Colonial relations.
Jim Egan is a professional photographer in Providence RI. He’s been a member of NEARA since 1977. In 1985, he purchased the rafters, beams, floorboards and chimney stones of the dismantled 1709 Burlingame House, a one and a half story stone ender. He reconstructed it as an art studio for his wife in Foster RI. Jim serves as NEARA state coordinator for Rhode Island.
Fohl, Tim (NEARA) Kenneth Leonard (MAS)
Many structures in Mesoamerica are aligned with sunrise or sunset on August 13. These alignments are attributed to the fact that August 13 is the starting date of the Olmec-Maya 260-105 day calendrical cycle. A similar ‘starting date’ appears to have been celebrated by the Pawnee of the Great Plains. We have found that there are a number of ceremonial structures built by Native Americans at as yet unknown times in New England. We describe a number of these structures and their alignments, which are far from solstice directions and close to the horizon position of the sun on August 13. We also describe the environments where they are found. It may be of further significance that the date of Algonquian New Year, which is celebrated on or about May 1, shares identical sunrise and sunset alignments with August 13. We also note that these dates lie close to the so-called ‘cross-quarter days’ of August 8 and May 7. We discuss known historical Algonquian connections with these times of year.
Timothy Fohl has an AB degree in physics from Dartmouth College (1956) and a PhD in geophysics from MIT (1963). He has participated in expeditions to northern Greenland and the Mid-Atlantic Ocean. More recently he has participated in several archaeological studies of Indian ceremonial structures in cooperation with Faculty of Bridgewater State College and the Tribal Historic Preservation Offices of several Indian tribes. He is president of the Technology Integration Group, Inc. and the Chief Science Officer of the Qualume Corp.
Kenneth C. Leonard, Jr. graduated from Harvard College in 1960 and received his Masters degree from Indiana University in 1961, both in Astronomy. He has published several technical papers. These include a new interpretation of ‘The Skidi Pawnee Chart of the Heavens’ displayed at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, published in Archaeoastronomy. His most recent publication, The Beechwoods Confederacy 1709-1809 (Heritage Books, Inc. 2003) provides a means to separate colonial artifacts in the area of Lakeville MA from those of the previous Native American occupation, the subject of his on-going research.
Fritz, Brian L. (Carnegie Museum of Natural History)
For nearly 12,000 years, prehistoric inhabitants living across Pennsylvania utilized flaked stone tools made from chert or flint. Chert is found naturally in Pennsylvania, but only occurs in certain geographically restricted source areas. Therefore, flaked stone tools found on archaeological sites represent the movement of chert and cultural interaction between lithic source locations and the site of final use. Geographic models of the cultural distribution of lithic types may help to reveal important information about prehistoric settlement patterns, cultural territories, and annual migrations. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provide a means to take into account the cost of traveling across uneven terrains and streams. Calculated cost-distances can then be used in models of cultural spatial patterns. This study utilized GIS to examine chert distribution across portions of south-western Pennsylvania.
Brian L. Fritz is life long avocational archaeologist soon to complete (2007) a B.A. in Anthropology and B.S. in Geology at Clarion University of Pennsylvania. He is also a Field Associate for Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Section of Man. Research interests include prehistoric lithic sourcing, soil geomorphology, and historic period mineral extraction.
Gallagher, Diana S. (Boston University)
Preservation of organic materials in the acidic soils of the northeast can be problematic but privies, when conditions are right, can provide better preservation than many other types of sites. Identification of parasite eggs is often possible in these cases and this can provide information about many aspects of life on these sites while the privy was in use. Archaeoparasitology involves extracting eggs from soil samples using a variety of techniques, identifying the parasites present and calculating egg density per gram of soil. Complicating factors in this type of research include the age and condition of the privy, in situ and post-excavation egg degradation and the degree to which the presence and density of eggs can be connected to the lives of those who made use of the privy.
While many northeastern sites have been analyzed for parasites, the results of two privies will be presented. The first belonged to the Widow Pratt and is from early to mid eighteenth-century Newport, RI, excavated by Professor James Garman in 2000-1. The second is from the nineteenth-century African Meeting House on Beacon Hill, excavated by UMass Boston in 2005. Both sites have yielded a sufficient number of eggs of different types to provide information on health, sanitation and diet. These analyses serve to illustrate the possibilities of archaeoparasitological research for sites involving privy contexts.
Diana Gallagher has degrees in Latin, Classics and Anthropology. She is just beginning a post-Masters PhD program at B.U. and looks forward to finishing, with any luck, in some ten to twenty years. She has a husband, two daughters and three cats, all of whom are very supportive, especially the cats. She has worked in the past for the Massachusetts Historical Commission and is presently employed in graduate administration at MIT.
Gilbert, Colgate
In 1996 a group of Avocational Archeologists and Avocational Historians began studying a series of standing stone sites in Franklin County, Massachusetts to see how they could have fit into the local historic past. Instead, after about 10 years of research, the data suggests that the sites were more probably Presettlement Observatories that were potentially built in conjunction with local Contact Period Indian Agroforestry Upland Artificial Habitats. The author reviews the data, postulates a working hypothesis, and suggests opportunities for further research on these sites and topics.
Colgate Gilbert is an Avocational/Historic Researcher and an Avocational Archeologist. He got his BA in History from Keene State College in 1978 and did some graduate work in History at Keene State College. He also spent four field seasons as a field volunteer in the New Hampshire State Conservation and Rescue Archeological Program field school. He has been involved in over a dozen archeological research projects over the years, helped in non profit administration for a regional non profit organization for 17 years and has published some articles in local journals. He is currently coordinating research of the Sweetser and Thayer Standing Stones Sites in Franklin County, Massachusetts with a group of fellow avocational historians and avocational archeologists.
Gingerich, Joe (University Of Wyoming) R. Michael Stewart (presenter)
This paper discusses new Paleoindian research at the Shawnee-Minisink site. New excavations spanning three years at Shawnee-Minisink have revealed one of the densest activity loci ever recorded at the Paleoindian level. The number of artifacts, carbonized plant remains, and radiocarbon dates from these excavations warrants some reevaluation of the site.
Joe Gingerich received his BA in Anthropology in 2004 and is currently a MA student at University of Wyoming. His interests include Paleoindian studies, Clovis in Eastern North America, lithic analysis, refitting studies and geomorphology.
Grossman-Bailey, Ilene (RGA/BAI), Lauren Cook, (BAI/DMJM Harris)
During a survey for a water treatment plant and pipeline in Norwell, Richard Grubb & Associates (RGA) and Boston Affiliates (BAI) located six sites in the Third Herring Brook/North River drainage in eastern Massachusetts. Three of the sites yielded Late Archaic to Early Woodland radiocarbon dates; archaeobotanical remains from features included grapes, nuts, acorns, and wood. Projectile points were dated to the Middle and Late Archaic. Although testing was limited to Phase I intensive survey and Phase II site evaluation of portions of the sites, they provide information about site function, lithic use, seasonality, and subsistence strategies, building on previous work in the North River core area.
Ilene Grossman-Bailey, RPA, is a senior archaeologist with Richard Grubb & Associates based in New Jersey. Her research interests include prehistoric coastal and maritime adaptations, marginal and boundary areas, the history of archaeology, symbolic dimensions of material culture, and lithic resource uses. She received her PH.D. from Temple University in 2001 and currently teaches at Monmouth University.
Lauren J. Cook, RPA, is Senior Archaeologist for DMJM Harris Planning in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he conducts and manages archaeology for transportation projects around the country. His interests include urban archaeology, industrial archaeology, the archaeology of social class and status, and waterfront archaeology. He has been researching and working on the historical archaeology of the northeast and mid-Atlantic since 1979.He has an MA in Archaeological Studies from Boston University.
Heckenberger, Michael and Joshua Toney
Jim Petersen's career spanned three decades, two continents, and the Caribbean sea. His body of works is so diverse and covers such a broad area that it is hard to see common themes that run throughout Jim's career. This paper attempts to draw commonalities and continuities between his work in NE North America, with that in the Caribbean and Amazonia. Three things stand out: (1) Jim's deep commitment to culture history; (3) his keen interests in the information material culture holds about the identities and lifeways of human groups; and (3) his belief in the nature and importance of cultural difference, his inexhaustible curiosity and documentation abilities, and other features that might be glossed under the common label "neo-Boasian" anthropology.
Michael J. Heckenberger is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh (1996). He has conducted research in the Eastern United States, the Caribbean, and the Amazon. He is the author of The Ecology of Power: Culture, Place and Personhood in the Southern Amazon, AD 1000-2000 (2005) and co-editor of Os Povos do Alto Xingu: Historia e Cultura (2201) and Time and memory in Indigenous Amazonia: Anthropological Perspectives (2006). Heckenberger began his career in archaeology after taking Jim petersen’s first field school (1983) as a recent Ph.D. in arcaheology, since that timehe has collaborated on diverse research and life projects, including co-authoring over a dozen papers with Jim on each of the above regions.
Joshua R. Toney received his B.A. in history from the University of Vermont (1996) and his M.A. in anthropology from the University of Florida (2005) where he is currently working on his Ph.D. His doctoral work is based on ethnoarchaeological research being conducted in the southern Amazon. Since his first field school experience with Jim Petersen in 1995, Joshua has been an active field archaeologist working in North America, South America, and the Caribbean.
Hranicky, William Jack (President, ESAF)
This illustrated paper uses McCary Fluted Point Survey data to provide an approach to identifying Clovis points in Virginia. Nearly 50 classic Survey points are illustrated. Clovis point landmarks (features), namely fluting and grinding, are used to establish baselines for identifying Clovis points. These properties are compared to the Survey database (benchmarks) to establish a point typology that most archaeologists would accept as being Clovis. The paper offers exceptions that are Paleoindian but not necessarily Clovis, such as fluted knives, large lanceolate-shaped ground bifaces, and fluted blade points. It argues a generic morphology for establishing Clovis typology.
Jack Hranicky has been active in American prehistoric archaeology since the 1960s. He is a charter member of SOPA (now RPA), past president of the Archaeological Society of Virginia, former chairman of the Alexandria Archaeology Commission, and current ESAF President. He is the Directory of the Virginia Rockart Survey and the McCary Fluted Point Survey of Virginia. His major interest is the Paleoindian era in the U.S.
Ingmanson, Ellen (Bridgewater State College, MA)
Relative to some areas of anthropology, gender and feminist issues were slow to emerge as visible influences in archaeology. In spite of some apparent progress since about1990, though, questions remain. This paper will explore the current situation relative to the inclusion of women in archaeology broadly, and how it is related to similar issues in science and society at large. Within archaeology, this phenomenon will be examined from three related perspectives. First, is how many women are doing anthropology. Second is how women’s activities are investigated within archaeological sites. The third area is whether gender and feminist theories have been used to understand and interpret archaeological remains. An examination of these areas shows that women are indeed still missing from many aspects of archaeological investigation. This is not unique to archaeology, or even anthropology. Biological anthropology has struggled with the role of women during human evolution, the “Man the Hunter” paradigm, and few women paleoanthropologists. The missing women in science in general has been much debated and led to concerns about education and national productivity. Until the inclusion of women into all aspects and levels of inquiry occurs, we will continue to fail to understand the whole of the human experience.
Dr. Ellen Ingmanson has been the biological anthropologist at Bridgewater State College since 2003. While her research has focused on the evolution of intelligence, drawing on field work with the great apes in Africa and in captivity, her teaching interests include genetics, forensics, health, development issues and women’s roles in society.
Jacobucci, Susan A. (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
European colonists and writers portrayed land in the Americas as unused to justify their acquisition of it, but land was far from idle prior to the arrival of Europeans. Native Americans administered their landscapes and employed strategies to maintain resources on their lands in varying degrees. Their land management practices actively engaged the environment in physical and cultural ways and continued to do so during the period of colonialism. However, would colonialism affect indigenous land and resource management techniques, and would Native American responses to colonialism affect the ways in which they managed their natural resources?
My research explored this question as it pertains to the environmental and cultural history of the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation whose community members continue to occupy their reservation located in North Stonington, Connecticut that was granted in 1683. This study consisted of a pollen analysis of a sediment core taken from the 225-acre reservation, and also included an inspection of charcoal densities, a current vegetation survey, a documentary review of land use, and a comparison to other pollen studies of the region. My research reconstructed the vegetation and fire history of the reservation and compared the period spanning the Early Archaic to Late Woodland, to colonial times, paying close attention to the period surrounding the establishment of the reservation in the late 17th century. This study reviews three types of land and resource management techniques – burning regimes, deforestation and forest re-growth, and horticulture and subsistence strategies – employed by the Eastern Pequot and their ancestors.
Susan A. Jacobucci recently earned a MA in Historical Archaeology from the University of Massachusetts Boston. She also holds a BA in Sociology and a BS in Anthropology. Susan has participated in the archaeological excavation of both prehistoric and historic period sites located in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, and New Mexico. She will continue her examination of pollen analysis as a Research Assistant at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Susan is a longtime resident of Scituate, Massachusetts. She enjoys spending time with her friends and family and loves to explore New England’s scenic coastline.
Lattanzi, Gregory D. (New Jersey State Museum)
In order to understand the array of artifacts that moved through trade and exchange networks, attempts at sourcing them must be undertaken. Research has shown that local sources of copper were available to native peoples living in the Middle Atlantic; however, few sourcing studies performed provide mixed results. An assemblage of twenty pre-contact copper artifacts were analyzed to determine trace element composition, comparing with known native copper sources from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Midwest to assign probable provenience. Results of the most comprehensive sourcing study of Late Archaic to Middle Woodland copper artifacts from New Jersey and Pennsylvania are presented and implications for a regional exchange network are discussed.
Gregory D. Lattanzi is Registrar for the Bureau of Archaeology & Ethnology at the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton, New Jersey. He obtained a B.A in Anthropology from the State University of New York at Binghamton, and a M.A. in Anthropology from the City University of New York, Hunter College. Before working at the New Jersey State Museum, Mr. Lattanzi was employed at a number of contract archaeological firms in the northeast participating in excavations in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. He has published a number of articles, book reviews and given public presentations. He is currently involved in researching pre-contact copper artifacts in the Middle Atlantic and their implications on trade and exchange in the Northeast.
MacLeod, Maryanne (MAS)
During the archaeological excavation at Cedar Swamp in Westborough, MA, much of the artifactual evidence found included tools, which would have been used by women. These tools included scrapers, knives, and choppers. Also found were cooking platforms, a structure deemed to be an earth oven, pottery fragments, and food remains. These same features are found at other archaeological sites. Yet, there has been little evidence to interpret such sites from a woman’s point of view. What have we missed by ignoring this facet of archaeology and what does it mean? This paper will focus on these questions.
Maryanne has a degree in Anthropology from Norwich University, is a Trustee and member of the Massachusetts Archaeology Society and past Membership Secretary. She is also a Past President of the W. Elmer Chapter and President of the Central MA Chapters of MAS.
Martin, Frederick W. (NEARA , MAS)
Internal solstice sunbeams have been previously reported at two rock clusters near the center of this site. Using a backpack GPS unit accurate to 1 meter, with assistance from the Town of Sharon Conservation Commission, a GIS contour map has been made to show most of the large stones on the site. The map confirms earlier surveying of a straight row of large boulders in the direction of the southeast major lunar standstill. By on-site inspection and by analysis of the map, five sightlines are identified from significant lowland rock clusters to distant hilltop skyline stones. Azimuths can be determined to an accuracy of 0.2 to 0.60 . From the 2-foot contours, elevations ranging from 0.1 to 2.40 can be found to the same accuracy. Lengths range from 533 to 1594 feet. From these surveying data, the astronomical declinations of the sightlines are computed, including corrections for refraction and lunar parallax. Three major standstill and two other types of lunar (not solar) sightlines to the lower limb of the moon are identified, on the basis that they yield the same value of the earth’s obliquity within the errors. The average obliquity found for the earth’s axis is 24.2+-0.3 degrees, corresponding to an Archaic date of 5000 BC +- 3000 years. For 2m skyline rocks 30 m apart, the chance of finding randomly placed rocks simultaneously on all five of these sightlines is about 1 in 600,000. A Woodland date seems improbable.
Frederick W. Martin received a PhD degree in physics from Yale University in 1964. He taught and published research at the graduate level in Lexington Kentucky, Aarhus Denmark, and College Park Maryland, and subsequently founded three small research-oriented businesses. Presently he is still engaged in research on ion optics. The two solstice sunbeams at King Philip’s Cave are described in the record of the Oxford VII International Conference on Archaeoastronomy (isbn 1-882572-38-6, Pueblo Grande Museum Anthropological Papers No. 15, City of Phoenix, 2006), pages 287-296.
Mavor, James W. (NEARA)
The three places known popularly as the Vermont Calendar Sites were discovered and named by Byron E. Dix in 1974. The hills surrounding the bowl at Calendar One have natural peaks and valleys which mark the dates of a solar calendar. This kind of place is found in the cultures of all lands. In China, they call it a Dragon’s Lair. It is like a Greek Megaron, the sacred setting of temples, as described by Vincent Scully. The Mississquoi group of the Vermont Abenaki consider it a holy place.
At Calendar One we studied and mapped 8 stone chambers, 14 standing stones, 5 groups of stone piles, a stone pavement, and a building foundation, making 10 excavations where we drew and photographed every stone. In 1981 we published 11 solar solstice and equinox alignments, one stellar heliacal rise at solstice, 2 solar cross-quarter days (May and August), and one north-south. Numerous others remain unpublished. .In 1998, I revised the many notebooks of data and ideas which Byron and I produced, and drew a new map. I visualize future work on Native American culture at Calendar One, on similar sites in North America such as Crystal River, Florida; and in the mapping of Calendar Two.
James W. Mavor, Jr. received an S. M. degree from MIT in 1950 in naval architecture and marine engineering. He has served on the faculties of three universities and at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where he designed the deep submersible ALVIN. Since 1965 he has engaged in avocational research in archaeoastronomy, ancient history, and anthropology. His books include Voyage to Atlantis (Putnam, 1969) and joint authorship with Byron Dix of Manitou, the Sacred Landscape of New England’s Native Civilization (Inner Traditions, 1989). The winter solstice sun dagger at Table Rock is described in NEARA Journal 39, No. 2, winter 2005, pages 41-48.
Meli, Frederick F. (University of Rhode Island)
The 64-acre wooded landscape comprising the area known as the Queen’s Fort contains a plateau with several stone features. On its south side, a stone row extends 130 meters in a due north direction, pointing over a split boulder at the south edge of the plateau towards a small stone at its highest point. This stone shows multiple signs of stone tool work, with a large segment removed, forming an edge at 237 degrees azimuth. The edge points at a notched stone, in which the man-made notch points back at the small stone. Thus the north-south axis mundi is recorded, and the winter solstice sunset is recorded. The three stones and the structures on the plateau of the complex were used for viewing this winter phenomenon, and are still visible today. I will discuss a possible construction date in the Late Archaic period, the significance of the alignment, and possible correlation with recorded cultures and peoples.
Frederick Meli is a member of the Archaeological Institute of America, and the New England Antiquities Research Association. He received his BA from the University of Rhode Island in 1995 and his Masters and PhD from Umass Amherst in 1997 and 2000. He has been teaching archaeology and anthropology for ten years. He has done fieldwork in North America, Europe, and Mesoamerica. His current research centers on site work and research concerning Pre-Columbian indigenous peoples and their cultural artifacts, concentrating on cosmological and spiritual structures and ceremonies. He has published many articles, and is presently working on a book.
McConaughy, Mark A.
Jim Peterson’s was interested in the lifeways of the first inhabitants of the Northeast. This paper will examine the evidence for the first inhabitants of the Northeast and how it fits into the overall view of the North American Paleoindian Period. The earliest Northeast sites generally date later than the earliest Clovis (and possible Pre-Clovis) occupations from the West and Southeast. The “Clovis” points from the Northeast also are not quite like the classic forms from the Western United States. They have been given several different names, Debert/Vail, Gainey, etc. The variation in Northeastern fluted lanceolate points will be examined and compared to Clovis points from the rest of North America.
Paul, C. Thomas (NEARA)
A study of a line stone of structures was started in North Madison, Connecticut in 1996, after observing a 5-foot high neatly formed stone structure in the shape of a whale. From this structure the summer solstice sunset can be seen going down on Bluff Head six miles away at the Summer Hill Road ridge stone platform. The start of the line is at Fort Pond, at the location of a past Native American fort in Montauk, Long Island. It goes by the edge of Gardner Island and Plum Island, across Long Island Sound to Old Saybrook, CT at Cornfield Point, and moves inland across Westbrook through Clinton to Killingworth. It is marked by large boulders and stone complexes in a straight line on successively higher ridges, with a lack of complexes in the valleys and, as far as can be determined, a lack of either large boulders or complexes off the line on the ridges. A map of this line, and maps and photos of these complexes will be shown. . It may extend as far as Hunter Mountain in the Catskills in New York. The very large propped boulders suggest that the solstice line was set up a long time ago. The hilltop complexes suggest that knowledge of the line must have been passed on from one culture to the next.
C. Thomas Paul is a retired engineer. He attended Duke University and New Jersey Institute of Technology with a BSME and MS in Engineering, leading to a career in R & D at Millipore and 3M. He served on land use boards the past 23 years in Westford, MA and Madison, CT, and has been a member of the NEARA for 10 years, where he has given several presentations on the solstice line, and is currently treasurer. He assisted Dave Barron on digs at Gungywump in Groton, CT, and has visited many archaic sites in England, Scotland and France.
Peebles, Giovanna (Vermont Division for Historic Preservation)
Giovanna is Vermont's long time State Archeologist, working at the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation.
Pevarnik, George (Temple University)
Petrographic analyses of archaeological materials have been used routinely in various regions of North America (e.g., the Southwest) to elucidate settlement patterns and systems of trade/exchange. Such analyses have not been used to their full potential in the Middle Atlantic Region, especially as regards prehistoric ceramics. A petrographic analysis of the paste and temper of a sample of Middle Woodland ceramic sherds and 11 raw clay samples from the Middle Delaware Valley was conducted as part of a larger ceramic provenance study that included the elemental characterization of 119 ceramic sherds by Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA). The initial results of this petrographic analysis indicate that it is possible to ascribe ceramic production areas to the sub-physiographic level. Furthermore, this level of resolution provides an empirical method with which to evaluate existing models of production and settlement. Focusing on the Abbott Farm (28ME1) the mineralogical data are used to provide a preliminary evaluation of settlement patterns and ceramic production in the Middle Delaware Valley during the late Middle Woodland (A.D. 200-900) period.
George Pevarnik received a B.S. degree in anthropology/archaeology from Mercyhurst College in 2000. He is currently a third-year graduate student at Temple University. From 2000-2004 he worked in the Northeast, Middle Atlantic, Southeast, Midwest, Great Basin, and Pacific Northwest in cultural resource management. His research focuses on identifying settlement patterns, ceramic production, trade/exchange, and social organization using ceramic compositional analysis (petrographic and elemental).
Poirier, David (Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism)
David serves as Staff Archaeologist for the State Historic Preservation Office, Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism.
Robinson, Brian (University of Maine, Orono)
The Bull Brook site has been one of the cornerstones of Northeastern Paleo-Indian studies since the early 1950s, with changing importance as new questions developed. Recently the site has served as an extreme example of a large Paleo-Indian site with a ring shaped settlement pattern suggesting an organized event. The original excavators proposed that the site represented a large gathering or people almost 50 years ago, but the potential was only slowly recognized by the professional community. Recent efforts to evaluate the Bull Brook circle are focused on detailed reconstruction of mapping, field methods, cataloging, lithic analysis and distributional studies. A significant but little known body of records is available with which to test spatial distributions within the site, drawing on the memories and skills of the original excavators and every scrap of original documentation. The work is not yet finished but the pieces are fitting together at an increasing rate. Many critical players and threads of evidence allow a detailed look at a site the size of four football fields, discovered before CRM and before spatial characteristics of “Paleo-Indian hotspots” were even a topic of interest. Half the site was destroyed by sand and gravel activities within three years of the first avocational excavations. This presentation is about some of the remarkable circumstances that allow new questions to be asked 45 years after excavations were completed.
Brian Robinson received a BA at the University of New Hampshire and a PhD in Anthropology from Brown University. He had the good fortune to work on regional scale projects with a large number of sites, both in Alaska and with the Moorehead burial tradition in Maine. Spatial patterning on the landscape was an important focus in these projects. The current research on Bull Brook is a variation on that theme in the Pleistocene. Past positions were held at the Archaeology Research Center, University of Maine at Farmington and as a research associate of Frederick H West, working on the archaeology of Central Alaska. He is currently an assistant professor in the Anthropology Department and the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine.
Robinson, Paul (Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission)
Paul is the Principal State Archaeologist at the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission and an adjunct professor in the Anthropology Department at Rhode Island College.
Schindler, William (Monmouth University)
Archaeological evidence suggests that fish may have been a component of the hominid diet for at least a million years. However, residues associated from fishing and fishing related activities are scarce in the archaeological record since fish remains are extremely fragile and the majority of fishing related gear is created from organic materials. Consequently, much concerning prehistoric fishing and fishing related activities remains poorly understood. Researchers are therefore forced to explore alternate lines of evidence for gaining a more complete understanding of these activities. Experimental archaeology has the ability to offer a great deal in this regard. Several experiments were developed to help answer questions concerning the migratory fish exploitation in the Delaware Valley and to shed light on prehistoric fishing in general. The results of these experiments and insight they provided are presented here.
Bill Schindler received his Ph.D., from Temple University in 2006. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ. His research interests include prehistoric archaeology, experimental archaeology, primitive technologies, and GIS. Bill Schindler is the co-founder of the Center for Experimental Archaeology. This center provides services and training for archaeologists, museums, academia and the public, to promote experimental archaeology as a valuable research tool.
Schuldenrein, Joe (Geoarchaeology Research Associates)
The Late Quaternary geomorphic history of the Delaware Valley is among the best documented in the Middle Atlantic region. Floodplain morphology is relatively simple, constrained by structural controls that have created a terrace system and alluvial sequences controlled by the vertical rather than lateral dimension. The archaeological components represented in floodplain and terrace deposits articulate systematically with marker soil horizons and discrete floodplain facies. This presentation synthesizes the geomorphic history and archaeological implications of that history the length of the valley. It is proposed that site-landform correlations for this trunk drainage have ramifications across Pennsylvania’s primary rivers and elsewhere in the Eastern Woodlands. Such correspondences have applications for researchers and planners alike.
Joe Schuldenrein is Principal Archeologist and President of Geoarcheology Research Associates. A former Fulbright Fellow and Fellow of the Field Museum, Dr. Schuldenrein received his Ph.D. in environmental archeology at the University of Chicago in 1983. Dr. Schuldenrein's experience includes work across the Plains, Southwest, Rockies and Great Basin as well as in all geographic areas east of the Mississippi River. Dr. Schuldenrein has served as Principal Investigator on over 80 archeological projects with a wide variety of clients in the federal, state, local and private sectors. He has authored more than 100 professional publications as well as numerous unpublished technical reports.
Shaffer, Gary D. (USDA/Natural Resources Conservation Service, Bangor, Maine)
This paper describes a concentration of soapstone vessels with incised decorations found along the lower Susquehanna River in northeastern Maryland. Some of the decorations—notches on vessel rims and a handle—are occasionally noted elsewhere in the Middle Atlantic and the eastern United States. However, a few of the incised designs are more complex and consist of parallel lines grouped in triangular fields on exterior vessel bodies. Decorated walls like these are only rarely reported in the eastern United States. Analysis of the decorated soapstone vessels includes consideration of their chronology, meaning, and spatial distribution.
Simon, Brona (Massachusetts Historical Commission)
Brona is the State Archaeologist of Massachusetts. She is also the Acting Executive Director of the Massachusetts Historical Commission and Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer.
Spencer-Wood, Suzanne M. (Harvard University)
Archaeologists have uncritically used androcentric histories to construct America’s material past in the shape of gender stereotypes, in which men held all the important public roles and women were limited to housewife roles. Recent feminist research has revealed how women’s social movements materially transformed American culture from the 19th century into the 20th century. Reform women both modernized housework and also made it acceptable in the dominant gender ideology for women to have public professions. The reformers created many new women’s professions and public institutions. My survey of women’s reform sites in Boston brought many new types of sites to the awareness of historical archaeologists, from day nurseries, kindergartens and playgrounds to kitchen gardens, public kitchens, social settlements and domestic science classes and schools. These types of sites were lost to history until historians and archaeologists stopped assuming historic women were “just” housewives whose roles were insignificant to history. These sites were found by asking about the public importance of women’s social agency. As Alfred North Whitehead said, “An Age is Defined by the Questions it asks.” I would add that an age is also defined by the questions not asked.
Suzanne Spencer-Wood is Associate Professor in Anthropology at Oakland University and Associate of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. She wrote the first feminist article published in the journal Historical Archaeology, in 1987. She then organized the first two international conference symposia on gender research in historical archaeology in 1989. Dr. Spencer-Wood subsequently organized several additional symposia and has published many book chapters and articles forwarding the application of feminist theory in historical archaeology.
Spiess, Arthur (Maine Historic Preservation Commission)
Arthur has been an archaeologist with the Maine Historic Preservation Commission since 1978. He is currently Editor of Archaeology of Eastern North America, and a Trustee of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor.
Stewart, Frances L. and Ellen Cowie (University of Maine, Farmington)
Almost ten years ago, Stewart argued that the meat diets of the proto-historic Huron and the proto-historic St. Lawrence Iroquoians were distinctive. Zooarchaeological analysis of the faunal deposits at the Headquarters Site, located in northwestern Vermont, suggested that it might be a St. Lawrence Iroquoian site. Independently and almost concurrently, Jim Petersen suggested that the ceramics were not merely Iroquois-like but rather possibly actual St. Lawrence Iroquoian. In this paper, we review the distinctive features of St. Lawrence Iroquoian faunal material based on sites in Canada before presenting a summary of the Headquarters Site’s faunal material for a comparison of these two sets of data. Who lived at the Headquarters Site is still being investigated and for this we sorely miss Jim’s expertise.
Tiede, Vance R. (Archaeological Society of Connecticut)
Most artifacts and features discovered at the Gungywamp site near Groton, Connecticut may be shown to be of either Native American or English colonial origin. Nevertheless, some anomalous, if controversial, evidence appears to be more consistent with a 7th century Irish Early Christian interpretation, e.g.: Hiberno-Latin epigraphy, calendrically oriented drywall oratory architecture, and carbon-14 dating. The anomalous evidence is presented for discussion and salient research implications are suggested.
Vance R. Tiede earned a MA in Archaeology at Yale University, and served as research assistant to the late Dr. Gerald S. Hawkins. Tiede has lectured and published on his own research in astro-archaeology in Britain, China, and United States. He currently teaches History and French at Stratford High School, Stratford, Connecticut and is a member of the Archaeological Society of Connecticut, the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, and Historical Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society.
Timreck, Ted (Film Producer)
(Hidden Landscapes) T.W.Timreck is producing a series of video programs exploring the development of early, Eastern Native culture. The "Hidden Landscape" series will build on the research of his original "Red Paint" film to look at recent discoveries and the rapidly changing climate of opinion that is adding new depth and sophistication to the archeological story of Native civilization in the Northeast. The program segment being offered at the conference investigates the controversial history of the Eastern stone ruins and offers new perspective on the emerging topic of Native ceremonial landscape in the region.
(A Celebration of James Mavor) Beginning in the 1970's, James Mavor and Byron Dix began a collaboration to investigate the stone ruins of the Northeast that would eventually lead to their being thought of as the Squier and Davis of our time. This short program will begin by documenting their work at the famous "Calendar Sites" of Vermont where they first began to develop their ideas about the possibility of indigenous origins for the stonework. Their particular interests were in astronomy but this lead them to explore wider areas of the terrain and helped them begin to piece together the story of Native ceremonial landscapes in the East.
Since the mid 70's TedTimreck has specialized in portraits of artists and anthropological programming. Beginning in 1980, he has worked extensively with Smithsonian scientists documenting field research, producing video and
electronic media for The National Museum of Natural History and programming for public and cable television. He is the producer of the Smithsonian's Arctic Studies and Paleo Indian Web Sites. Television works include "Franz
Boas" for the PBS Odyssey series along with "The Lost Red Paint People" and "Vikings in America" for PBS (Nova). His television portraits of artists (PBS national specials and series) include, Charles Ives, Thomas Eakins,
Augustus Saint Gaudens and Frederick Law Olmsted. Mr. Timreck is a research associate with the Arctic Studies Center at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
Tremblay, Roland (Consulting Archaeologist)
Evidence relating to a possible presence of Saint Lawrence Iroquoians in Northern New England was one of many interestes that Jim Petersen pursued in Northeastern archaeology since the late 1980’s. This was initially inspired by debates on the significance of some XIXth century discoveries of complete or near complete vessels in Northwestern Vermont, but was soon fed by a number of new discoveries during the past fifteen years in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont as well as Québec. This paper carries on this research momentum by offering new comparative data with other Saint Lawrence Iroquoian assemblages on a chemical level. Clay samples were taken from 11 significant vessels from Vermont and Maine and submitted to Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA). Results are presented and discussed within the wider scope of Saint Lawrence Iroquoian research and their relation to the Abenaki people of Northern New England.
Tuck, James
The entire human history of Ferryland, on the east coast of Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula, encompasses only about 500 years. European fishermen and Beothuk seem to have arrived there at about the same time, not long after John Cabot's voyage of discovery in 1497. Evidence of both groups has been recovered. Ferryland is better known as the scene of George Calvert's (the first Lord Baltimore) first New World adventure. Substantial remains of the 1621 colony of Avalon have been revealed over the past 15 years including defenses, harbour front structures, a forge, brewhouse and several dwellings. The plats include what appear to be Lord Baltimore's stone "Mansion House" and the First House, built by Captain Edward Wynne in 1621. An often overlooked chapter in Ferryland's history is the tenure of Sir David Kirke and his family between 1638 and the destruction of the place by French forces in 1696. Some remarkable traces of the Kirke family -- especially artifacts not often found on colonial sites -- have been revealed.
Waksman, Peter (NEARA)
The speaker has located several hundred rock pile sites within a few miles of his home in Concord, MA. The sites range in size from small ones with only two or three rock piles to large ones with hundreds of individual piles. Given this large sample of sites it is possible to make statistical observations and, in particular to observe that the majority of sites are found in the rocky un-plowable swamps and hills along what geologists call the "Nashoba Upthrust". This site distribution is the exact opposite of what would be predicted if rock piles were a by-product of farming related "agrarian" actrivities. Instead, rock piles are located where hills meet water in locations which suggest they were built as part of a very different cultural activity - probably by Native Americans.
The observation that rock pile sites are located where hills meet water is discussed both from the point of the final site distribution map. Also the number of sites found over time is plotted as a classical "learning curve" to demonstrate that site locations are predictable, thus providing a basis for verifying and reproducing these observations.
Peter Waksman is an amateur archeologist interested in traditional archeology as well as antiquities. He is a former member of the Concord Historical Commission, a former member of the board of directors of NEARA, and was the first editor of the NEARA web page. Today he continues active exploration of rock piles sites and continues to be involved with using the web for promoting the study and protection of stone ceremonial sites in New England, through a web log ("blog") at http://rockpiles.blogspot.com. Waksman has a PhD in Mathematics from the Univeresity of Minnesota and is employed as a Software Engineer at Philips Medical Systems.
Wall, Suzanne (Andover Geologic Consulting) McAleer, Bruce (NEARA)
In Essex County Massachusetts and Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, Native American people had a well-developed mining tradition in steatite, altered igneous rocks and altered metamorphic rocks. These quarries, worked stones and ledges cover a large area. The associated suite of tool marks include: pecked grooves along cracks and foliations, and deeply pecked notches. The in-situ bowl found in Hillsboro County, NH in October, 2004, associates the groove and notch techniques with prehistoric quarrying. Light colored altered igneous rocks have also been utilized indicating the variety of materials and the geographic extent of Native American utilization are greater than previously assumed.
Suzanne Wall is a Professional Geologist with a MA from Boston University in Geology and ground water. She has consulted in the areas of quarrying, glacial geology and groundwater and applies her experience in glaciated metamorphic terrains to geoarchaeological problems.
Bruce McAleer, an advocational archaeologist studies boulder trains and other terminal glacial features to gain an understanding of Native American use of lithic resources. He is a geographer, independent CRA, and a graduate of Framingham State College.
Wolter, Scott F. (American Petrographic Services, Inc.) Richard Nielsen
Recent investigations into the Kensington and the Spirit Pond Rune Stones have uncovered compelling new evidence that is consistent with all four runic inscriptions having a late medieval origin. These inscriptions also exhibit numerous features that suggest an obvious connection to each other. Notable similarities include the use of Easter Table dating, pentadic numbers in Arabic placement, and diagnostic medieval runes. The research on the Kensington Rune Stone from Minnesota has led to a plausible scenario to explain who carved the inscription, where the party came from and why. The authenticity of all three Spirit Pond inscriptions from Maine appear to be confirmed by the discovery of the origin of a mysterious “X”-like symbol on the Map Stone that was found on a medieval navigation instrument.
Scott Wolter, a professional archaeologist, has been president of American petrographic Services since 1990 and is responsible for the independent petrographic analysis testing laboratory. He has been the principal petrographer in over 5000 investigations throughout the United Sates as well as Canada and Puerto Rico, including the evaluation of the fire-damaged concrete at the Pentagon following the Septemebet 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. Scott has recently published, “The Kensington Rune Stone:Compelkling New Evidence,” with Richard Nielsen, where they presented some startling new evidence on the authenticity of the stone by compiling their 25 years of collective research on the artifact.
Young, Judith (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
With the culmination of the 18.6 year cycle of the Moon in 2006, also called the Major Lunar Standstill, we are afforded the unique opportunity to observe the extreme wanderings of the Moon. The 18.6 year cycle is caused by the precession of the plane of the lunar orbit, while this orbit maintains a 5° tilt relative to the ecliptic. At the peak of this cycle, the Moon's declination swings from -28.8° to +28.8° each month. What this means is that the Moon can be seen rising and setting more northerly and also more southerly than the solar extremes, and will transit monthly with altitudes which are higher in the sky than the summer Sun and lower in the sky than the Winter Sun.
The U.Mass. Sunwheel is a stone circle calendar which I created in 1997 on the campus of U.Mass. Amherst, with 8'-10' tall stones marking the cardinal directions, the solstice sunrise and sunset directions, and the northernmost and southernmost moonrise and moonset directions. This talk will describe calendar sites old and new (in New Mexico, Colorado, Scotland, England, and Massachusetts) where astronomical alignments indicate the extremes of the Moon's declination during the time of the Lunar Standstill.
Judy Young is a tenured full professor of astronomy at the University of Massachusetts, where she has taught since 1983. She received her BA in astronomy in 1974 from Radcliffe/Harvard, and her PhD in physics in 1979 from the University of Minnesota. She has authored over 120 scientific publications and is known around the world for her studies of star formation in galaxies. Inspired by a Sunwheel on former Blackfeet Indian Territory in Montana, Judy built the world's first stone circle calendar on a university campus. In recent years, she has taught "Exploring the Spiritual Universe" meditation workshops. For further information, see www.umass.edu/sunwheel and http://www.astronomyandspirituality.com
