Center for the Study of the First AmericansDepartment of AnthropologyTexas A&M University4352 TAMUCollege Station, TX 77843-4352www.centerfirstamericans.com

Volume 23, Number 2 ■■■■■ April, 2008

he Center for the Study of the FirstAmericans fosters research and publicinterest in the Peopling of the Americas.T

The Center, an integral part of the Departmentof Anthropology at Texas A&M University,promotes interdisciplinary scholarly dialogueamong physical, geological, biological andsocial scientists. The Mammoth Trumpet,news magazine of the Center, seeks to involveyou in the peopling of the Americas by reportingon developments in all pertinent areas ofknowledge.

Paleoamericans in Yankee Country

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Stony and densely forested, New Hampshire has never yieldedan easy living, certainly not for people occupying this beautifulland at the end of the Ice Age. When you don’t have mammothor bison on your menu, you’ve got to work hard for a no-frillsexistence. Lucky for Dick Boisvert, volunteers like this crewexcavating the Jefferson II Israel River site in 1998 haven’t lostsight of the work ethic. “I’d put them up against any profes-sional crew in the business in terms of quality,” says Dr.Boisvert, New Hampshire State Archaeologist, of the workers ofthe State Conservation and Rescue Archaeology Program.SCRAP trains tomorrow’s archaeologists. Today the eagerworkers give Boisvert the means to document the archaeologyof the Granite State. Our story on the discoveries being madein this rocky corner of New England starts on page 9.

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specialist whose emphasis is on teaching his charges howto do field archaeology the right way. Rigorous trainingprobably helped sharpen their alertness in recognizingchannel-flake fragments in their shovel tests. Channelflakes are a sure indicator of fluted-point manufacture, andfluted points are exclusively Paleoamerican. A little extradigging at Colebrook turned up the post-molds and anassociated hearth, which all dated from 10,300 ± 170RCYBP—a rare find indeed.

Today Boisvert is New Hampshire’s State Archaeolo-gist, and Edna Feighner works with him directly. They’vedug again at Colebrook, pulling out more data that arehelping them “write that part of the story for New Hamp-

shire,” as Boisvert puts it. But Colebrook is only one ofthe pies Boisvert and his crew have their fingers in.When an entire state is your archaeological bailiwick,

you’ve got an excellent opportunity to get a lot ofquality research done—and Boisvert has taken advan-

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HEN IT COMES TO UNDERSTANDING even the sim-plest aspects of Paleoamerican culture, archaeologistsdon’t have it easy. It’s difficult to infer behavior from

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the meager scraps of stone and bone most of our efforts arerewarded with, so it’s a red-letter day when we identify thepreserved remains of something more ephemeral—suchas the ancient post-molds discovered by contractarchaeologist Edna Feighner at New Hampshire’s Cole-brook site a decade ago. Those patches of mottled,organic-rich soil, all that remained of structural sup-port posts that had rotted away 11,000 years before,offered the opportunity to flesh the skeleton of supposi-tion with firm behavioral data.

While the credit for the Colebrook discoveryrightly belongs to Feighner and her crew, they gotan assist from Richard Boisvert. When Colebrookcame to light, Dr. Boisvert was the Deputy StateArchaeologist of New Hampshire, which alsomade him director of the State Conservation andRescue Archaeology Program (SCRAP). Severalof Feigner’s crew members had previouslyworked as SCRAP volunteers for Boisvert, a lithics

Dick Boisvert at the Mount Jasper rhyolite quarry inBerlin, New Hampshire, which was exploited from

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The 2006 SCRAP field schoolexcavations at the Colebrook site.

Bob Potter, owner ofthe Potter site near

Randolph, holding apoint fragment from afailed fluting attempt.

tage of that opportunity in spades. Hisstate may not be the biggest in the Union,but it’s archaeologically rich, with a cul-tural time depth extending back to theClovis era.

Big responsibilitiesAs New Hampshire’s top archaeologist,Dick Boisvert oversees much of the ar-chaeological research in the state. Heconsiders this one of his biggest responsi-bilities; consequently he regularly has tosit in judgment on other archaeologistsand often must assess the quality of theirwork without ever setting foot on the sitesin question. Boisvert’s office also handlesNative American repatriation issues,which can be unusually complex in NewHampshire, since the state’s require-ments are significantly more demandingthan federal requirements, as outlined inthe Native American Graves Protectionand Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Thatthere are no state or federally recognizednative tribes in New Hampshire, just amyriad of small bands, makes the workeven more difficult.

Another of Boisvert’s top priorities isfinding ways to do archaeological research on a shoestring. “Wedon’t have a lot of resources to commit to doing archaeology inNew Hampshire,” he points out, “so what we do have, we spendvery carefully.” He depends heavily on his SCRAP volunteers tohelp him get the work done,and despite his busy sched-ule, he still finds time to workwith them frequently. In fact,they’re a source of pride. “I’dput them up against any pro-fessional crew in the businessin terms of quality,” he says.“Some of our SCRAP volun-

whole point of the SCRAP program is public education; nonethe-less about a third of the participants do end up either becomingprofessional field archaeologists or going on to graduate school,which helps spread Boisvert’s brand of careful, detail-oriented

archaeology unto the next generation. “We’re quiteproud of the SCRAP program,” he says. “We do first-quality work, and we’ve contributed a great deal tothe archaeology of New Hampshire.”

The secrets of ColebrookSerendipity can’t be ignored as a major player inarchaeological discovery, but the truth is that mostfinds are the result of careful study, the developmentof complex models, and lots of field testing—whichinvolves hard slogging through all kinds of terrain,and the physically demanding work of shovel testafter boring shovel test. Of course, all that’s useless ifyou don’t recognize what you’ve got when you find it.

The Colebrook site turned up during a rou-tine gas pipeline survey in 1997. Thankspartly to their SCRAP experience, when sev-eral of Edna Feighner’s crew identified chan-nel-flake fragments in their shovel tests, theyknew they’d found something special. Fur-ther excavation uncovered the 11,000-year-old post-molds and hearth that made the siteespecially interesting.

teers have worked with ussince the early 1990s; they’resolid, reliable, and highlyskilled.”

Although the size of the group has variedover the years, SCRAP generally consists of acore of 50–60 dedicated volunteers. The

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As a result of their findings, the pipeline was rerouted, andthe landowners decided to preserve the Colebrook site undis-turbed—until 2006, when they allowed Boisvert and Feighner toreturn and conduct further excavations during that year’s SCRAPfield school. In the 25 m2 SCRAP excavated, they found evidenceof extensive fluted-point production, including a biface fragmentand 73 channel-flake fragments, some of which could be refittedto form whole flakes. No points were recovered; they wereapparently carried away for use elsewhere.

Colebrook is a small site,perhaps 8 m in diameter, butits value far exceeds its size.“We’re reasonably certainthat we have four identifi-able episodes of tool manu-facture here,” Boisvert re-flects. “Two distinct heavyones, a pretty good concen-tration, and a dispersed episode. We’re getting down to recon-structing individual behavior 11,000 years ago. I think that’scool, to use technical terminology.”

While it’s difficult to tell when these different episodes of toolmanufacture occurred in rela-tionship to one another, Bois-vert suspects that they all tookplace over a relatively shortspan of time; in fact, Cole-brook may represent a single-occupation site. The lithictechnology is clearly post-Clovis, of a subtype calledMichaud/Neponset (aftersites in Maine and Massachu-setts, respectively). The Cole-brook people manufacturedwhat Boisvert calls “the East-ern equivalent to Folsom”—long, narrow points withextremely thin, lengthy flutes.“The thing that’s really inter-esting is that you get this mul-tiple fluting—flutes on top offlutes. They were very interested in getting very, very thin bases,driving off thin channel flakes on both sides and then going backfor second tries.”

Impressive as the evidence of fluted-point manufacture is, it’snot so unusual for stone artifacts to survive 11,000 years in theground. What’s more exciting is the fact that structural remainssurvived, specifically a total of 20 post-molds. Finding post-molds is exceedingly rare in the East, given the cool, relativelywet environment, not to mention the opportunity for mechanicaldestruction due to factors like root growth and animal burrow-ing. “The post-molds give us some perspective on both behaviorand the structure of the site,” Boisvert says. Unfortunately, it’shard to point to specific domestic structures based on the post-molds. “Essentially,” he says, “post-mold interpretation shouldbe a connect-the-dots operation—but I don’t feel like we canconnect the dots yet to point toward a particular type of struc-

ture. The post-molds may represent something besides domes-tic structures; say, more on the lines of roasting spits or dryingracks. Some are close to hearths, and may be for cooking propsor supports. I’d prefer not to come to any judgment until we’veconducted more in-depth analysis.”

In any case, the presence of the post-molds suggests thatpeople were doing something besides just making stone tools atthis riverbank encampment 11,000–11,300 years ago, and itgives Boisvert and his crew something to work with besides the

An extensively reworked Michaud/Neponset flutedpoint from the 2004 excavations at the Jefferson IIIsrael River site, evidence that even 11,000 years agothe occupants adhered to the venerable New Englandmaxim, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or dowithout.” The point is 57.73 mm long, 25.33 wide,and 17.59 mm thick.

Fluted points from New Hampshire:A, Vail/Debert style, New Boston;B, Gainey style, Ossipee; C, Michaud/Neponset style, Conway; D, Nicholas/Cormier style, Jefferson.

lithics. In addition, some of the features contained identifiablebotanical remains, including seeds; a student at Northern Ari-zona University is writing his thesis on them at the moment.This research is still in its preliminary stages, however, and

Boisvert prefers to keep mum about it untilthe student publishes his results.

Other Paleoamericans inNew HampshireAs intriguing as Colebrook is, itisn’t the be-all-and-end-all of Paleo-american sites in the GraniteState; in fact, it represents just oneof a number of Paleo sites onBoisvert’s plate. For example,since 1996 he and his SCRAP asso-ciates have been working at five

Paleoamerican sites on the Israel River near Jefferson, NewHampshire, all of which are crowded into a strip of land abouthalf a kilometer wide and a kilometer long. Local archaeologistand SCRAP alumnus Paul Bock identified the first three sites inthis archaeologically rich area in late 1995 while searching treethrows for artifacts after an especially fierce storm. The sites,which cover areas from one-half hectare to about four hectaresin size, exhibit the full range of Paleoamerican remains knownfor New Hampshire, starting with post-Clovis Gainey points andcontinuing on through 1,500–2,000 years of occupation. Oddlyenough, none of the sites is located near a water source; Boisvertsuspects the occupants were ambushing caribou.

Since 2003, Boisvert has also directed fieldwork at the Pottersite near Randolph, New Hampshire; it’s located about 12 milesfrom the Israel River Complex and appears to be related to them,at least on a cultural level. Like the specimens from Israel River,

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dart points found at Potter matchthose inferred from the channelflakes collected from Colebrook;they all belong to the Michaud/Neponset subtype. Potter is asingle-component site, but in thiscase, single component doesn’tmean single use. According toBoisvert, “The Potter site is apatchwork of totally differentkinds of artifact concentrations,all located very close together.One reflects woodworking; an-other biface production, specifi-cally fluting of dart points; and athird, general biface production.We’ve got three vastly different functions in a site that’s basically100 meters square.” In another example of the practical value ofthe SCRAP program, Boisvert was able to gather a group of 35volunteers to dig at the site in October 2007—a crew size manyfield archaeologists would kill for. They were able to complete1,000 person-hours of work in just 3 days.

Although most researchers don’t consider New Hampshirea hotbed of Paleoamerican research—for one thing, the state isexceedingly mountainous, and was still under the ice for centu-ries after the First Americans arrived—Boisvert is quick topoint out that there’s still some great Paleoamerican stuff in theNortheast. “People get all excited about the big dead animals inthe Southwest,” he says wryly, “but we do have some goodmaterial here. It’s hard to get to—we have these pesky thingscalled trees that get in the way, and we have to work throughglacial outwash—but we’ve got some impressive stuff thatwe’re trying hard to bring to light. There’s some first-rate work

Boisvert at the Colebrook site.The dated hearth lies directly in

front of him.

How to contact the principal of this article:Richard Boisvert, State ArchaeologistNew Hampshire Division of Historical Resources19 Pillsbury St. 2nd FloorConcord, NH 03301-3570e-mail: Richard.Boisvert@dcr.nh.gov

to be done in New England.”Fortunately, Boisvert hasthe right tools to do the job:an excellent group of volun-teers and professionals,with a powerful lever forclearing obstacles: “The as-set we have in New Hamp-shire is the fact that the stateis my sandbox. I can directresearch anywhere I want inthe state. I have to justify it,”he says, “but I have remark-able freedom.”

He laments, however,that more researchersaren’t working in NewHampshire, a fact he at-tributes to a scarcity ofhome-grown archaeolo-

gists. “We lack graduate programs in northern New England;there are no graduate archaeology degrees to be had inMaine, New Hampshire, or Vermont. Even in the Ivy Leagueschools, the emphasis on local stuff is remarkably thin. Luck-ily, we’ve had reasonable success at offering some good dataand research opportunities to researchers from elsewherewho want to look at it. It’s slow, it’s brick by brick, but sooneror later the building gets built.”

–Floyd Largent