Message #218477

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The archeologists started out digging in small test areas last fall. Where they found chips of stone, likely from tools, they opened up the area for further exploration. Moving in a methodically slow fashion, the excavators dug one meter squares. They divided those squares into four quarters, each about 50 cm. They then dug down, 5 cm at a time.

"Everything that we find is very precisely located, because, to make sense of what people were doing here, we need an accurate map of where every tool was found," Goodby said. "That's one of the critical things about archeology. A lot of people think, ‘oh archeology means finding lots of cool stuff.' Yeah it does, but what we're really trying to do here is learn about what the people were doing. And we can only do that if we recover the tools scientifically."

So far the artifacts have been found in oval clusters. Goodby speculates that these areas were where the people pitched tents or other shelters.

Primarily, the explorers have found a variety of stone tools that would have been used for processing animal hides, such as scraping tools. They've also found tools for making things out of bone and antlers as well as tools for engraving and splitting. But what's even more significant is what the stone tells the archeologists about the people who used them.

"We're learning for one thing that they had connections that extended all over Northern New England," Goodby said. "They were getting their stone from quarries as far away as northern Maine. And from sources in far north New Hampshire." He said there's evidence some of the stone may have come from Berlin and Jefferson.

He said they may have gotten this by following the caribou migratory routes, as that was their main game animal. He also said it may indicate that they were connected to other bands of people at this time so the stone moved from family to family.