SCRAP Fieldschool 2005: Wantastiquet Natural Area, Hinsdale NH

An archaeological field school jointly sponsored by the Monadnock Institute and the New Hampshire State Conservation and Rescue Archaeology Program (NHSCRAP) was held in July 2005 at the Native American Wantastiquet Mountain site in Hinsdale, New Hampshire. A crew of fifteen archaeologists including Franklin Pierce students and local school teachers worked on the edge of an undercut, eroding bank of the Connecticut River, excavating the last remnant of a large alluvial terrace that over the past century has been washed away by hurricanes and the effects of normal erosion. This season's work followed up on the 2004 Franklin Pierce field school, which had produced artifacts and radiocarbon dates dating from 2000 BC to 1200 AD, and small fragments of animal bone identified as woodchuck, turtle, black rat snake and timber rattlesnake. The site's name comes from the adjacent mountain, itself named after the Abenaki name for the West River, which enters the Connecticut from the Vermont site just upstream from the site.

The 2005 excavations focused on salvaging as much information as possible from the remaining portion of the site and on clarifying how the site was formed and the number and age of its occupations. This work resulted in the precise identification of two distinct occupational layers: an upper stratum containing large quantities of decorated pottery and triangular Levanna points from the Late Woodland period (c. 800-1500 AD), and a lower stratum that lacked pottery but included stemmed points made of quartz. An intact circular hearth feature was exposed in the lower stratum and radiocarbon dated to 4440 years before present.

Careful study of the soil layers at the site and consultation with geomorphologist Peter Beblowski helped determine that most of the soil on the site was deposited during catastrophic storms, including hurricanes in the first decades of the twentieth century. The floods produced by these storms left deep layers of fine sediments over the site, burying the remains of each occupation in turn to produce a stratified history of the Native American occupation.

Additional animal bones were recovered in the 2005 season, including a large number of snake vertebrae. The abundance of snake at the site, particularly timber rattlesnake, is an ongoing focus of research. Rattlesnakes were used by Abenaki people for thousands of years, sometimes in sacred contexts, and Wantastiquet Mountain is known to this day as one of the last remaining habitats for timber rattlesnake in New Hampshire. Identification and interpretation of these remains is being conducted by Tonya Largy of Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Analysis of data by FPC students continued in the fall semester of 2005, and a final site report is scheduled for completion in 2006. The two seasons of work at the site have produced rare insights into Abenaki life over thousands of years, educated Franklin Pierce students and members of the public in the practice of archaeology, helped save an important scientific and historical resource, and contributed to the efforts of the Institute's Monadnock Archaeological Project to protect and study the evidence for the long-term presence of Abenaki people in the Monadnock Region.