It took 11 days for archaeologists to dig two holes in Bradley, but that’s because they were looking for something specific.
A group of nine archaeologists from across New England were surehanded from Aug. 11 to Friday when digging for a way to date an artifact believed to be around 10,000 years old. The artifact, a projectile point that could have been used on a spear, dart or as an arrowhead, was found in 1987 but has not been precisely dated.
To date the artifact, the group of archaeologists, led by Nathaniel Kitchel, an associate professor at Salve Regina University and a research associate at Dartmouth College, found the dig sites in Bradley where it was found and took dirt and artifact samples to carbon date them in the university’s laboratory.
The two dig sites on the banks of the Penobscot River were located between the Knapp Cemetery and the Blackman Stream, the same sites University of Maine Professor David Sanger excavated in 1987 when he found the artifact.
The dig is part of a larger initiative funded through a National Science Foundation grant happening across New England to better understand what life was like at the beginning of the period we live in, the Holocene period, which directly followed the ice age. The project is trying to learn more about the environmental and social effects of the transition between these two periods and how that could help future societies.
“We’re trying to understand human responses to environmental change in the past that maybe, just maybe, in some circumstances, can help inform how we address potential future climate change,” Kitchel said.
The excavation took 11 days to dig up two separate 2-meter squares on the edge of Sanger’s sites, where the archaeologists found Indigenous pottery and flakes of stone from northern Maine. The flakes are believed to be shavings from stone tools being crafted, said Heather Rockwell, an assistant professor at Salve Regina.
The small ceramics and soil collected in the site will be dated using radiocarbon dating to better pinpoint the time period the projectile found in 1987 comes from.
After the artifacts are studied, they will be donated to the Maine State Museum, Rockwell said.
Every day in the field equates to three days researching in the lab and seven days writing up the findings, Rockwell said, making the dig just one step in the process to better understand New England after the Ice Age.
Part of that understanding is visualizing a completely different area than the one Mainers love today.
“We’re really talking about a different world, a very different place, and it can be hard to imagine, right? Many parts of New England have logging, fall foliage and we’re really attached to our trees. It’s part of our culture, right?” Kitchel said.
“I’d like you to imagine this place without that. So, that’s the challenge.”
