What? Yet another Paleo-Indian site in the neighborhood? Yep, that’s right. This one in Keene, N.H., dating back 12,570 to 12,660 years, some 300 to 500 years older than the DEDIC Site located on the southern skirt of Mount Sugarloaf along the Deerfield/Whately line.
What should come as no surprise is that this site — known to archaeologists as Tenant Swamp — is in reality old news by now. Then again, isn’t most “news” of Paleo-Indian sites old by the time it comes to light in a newspaper? Archaeologists who discover and explore such sites typically hold their cards tight to their vests and share what they know only within a tight, scholarly fraternity that knows better than to throw it into the public square for open discussion. Why? Primarily due to a fear of looting. Then, eventually, word starts trickling out before the archaeological project leader comes forward with a public presentation at a local college or historical society near the important site.
This is precisely the path the Tenant Swamp Site took to a Keene Sentinel article brought to my attention by retired archaeologist Dr. Peter A. Thomas, who over the weekend sent me a hyperlink to John McGauley’s story. McGauley had, a week earlier, attended a presentation by Franklin Pierce University archaeologist Robert Goodby, who discovered the site during a routine cultural-resource-management investigation surrounding a 2010 Keene Middle School construction project.
Goodby calls Tenant Swamp, “the best, most significant, most interesting site I’ve worked on,” over a 32-year career, then speculated that he’ll likely spend the rest of his career studying what was found there.
What was found were four occupancy sites (shelters) littered with scattered cooked bones and stone tools but no fluted points associated with Clovis bands of hunters, among the earliest New World inhabitants and once thought to be the first to reach the Americas from Asia. He hypothesizes that this pre-Clovis encampment was a winter settlement, where a band of hunter/gatherers sat inside around a fire performing various chores out of the elements. Such chores would have, in Goodby’s opinion, included preparing and cooking foods and making clothing. Not out of the question is the genesis of storytelling and oral history that continued for millennia, beyond the arrival of European settlers.
Paleontologist Dr. Richard Michael Gramly, who excavated the Sugarloaf site, cited Tenant Swamp in his monograph about the 2013 Sugarloaf Site dig, and compared it chronologically to the Vail (western Maine) and Whipple (Swanzey, N.H.) sites, which predate the presence of Clovis ornaments, such as beads and pendants, which were found at Sugarloaf and Bull Brook (Ipswich). He also said he recently excavated a slightly later winter Clovis site along the Whately/Hatfield line, where similar sheltered activity to that at Tenant Swamp would have taken place.
The Keene site is just more testimony in support of what Gramly preaches about the prevalence of Paleo sites in New England’s Connecticut Valley. He claims that were scientists committed to finding and exploring such untapped sites, they would find many more interrelated and revealing sites in the valleys and upland alike. He has many times told me in private conversation that the Sugarloaf Site is the tip of the iceberg in the Connecticut Valley; that if archaeologists were enthusiastically scouring the landscape for Clovis evidence, they would be finding a plethora of it. Not only that, but very likely evidence of pre-Clovis Cumberland occupation as well, similar to that found at the Dutchess Quarry Caves in Orange County, N.Y. The place to search for evidence of pre-Clovis Cumberland occupation is in the uplands, around rock shelters that existed above the ancient shoreline of Lake Hitchcock, which drained some 13,000 years ago. Problem is that such upland exploration is rare indeed because it’s difficult.
Although most of the Paleo evidence thus far discovered in New England comes from river valley settings, there are Clovis sites that have come to light in the mountains. Back in his day at the University of Vermont, Thomas recalls investigating a Paleo site found during construction of the Okemo Mountain Resort parking lot in Ludlow, Vt. And how about this one? On the western slope behind the central Vermont ski resort, ancient woolly mammoth bones were uncovered on Mount Holly during 1848 railroad construction. So, what are the chances that such a find could happen in our own upland bogs on either side of the Connecticut River? It’s not unlikely if ever such things were searched for.
Instead, these kinds of finds are more typical in the lowlands, where farmers trying to extend their croplands by draining swamps happen to bump into mastodon or mammoth remains with a backhoe, similar to the Bowser Road discovery in Orange County, N.Y., that was recently excavated and written about by Gramly.
Pssst. Don’t tell anyone, but a backhoe working along the edge of a bog in the Berkshire County town of South Egremont in 1982 unearthed mastodon remains. The question is: If it can happen in South Egremont, why not South Ashfield or Northampton, Heath or Rowe or Hawley? Why not Hatfield or Hadley, Bernardston or Northfield, Southwick or Agawam?
The answer is that there is absolutely no reason why this stuff cannot be unearthed in the Pioneer Valley and its wooded hilltowns. Experts say all you have to do is look. Don’t doubt it for a second.
Recorder sports editor Gary Sanderson is a senior-active member of the outdoor-writers associations of America and New England. Blog: www.tavernfare.com. Email: gsand53@outlook.com.