Archaeologists Find 17th-Century Structure in Maine
By Gwendolyn Purdom | Online Only | Aug. 19, 2010
Archaeologists at Colonial Pemaquid State Historic Site, also a National Historic Landmark, found remnants of a 17th-century structure there.
Credit: Colonial Pemaquid State Historic Site
While many of America's state parks are closed this summer due to budget cuts, an archaeological dig is under way at a state historic site in Maine. Historians and archaeologists at Colonial Pemaquid State Historic Site in New Harbor, Maine, unearthed evidence of a 17th-century garden fence, prehistoric pottery fragments, and what they believe to be the remnants of the state-operated site's 20th known Colonial structure during a five-day dig last week.
Led by the Maine Historic Preservation Commission and the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands, the $5,000 dig was sponsored by the nonprofit Friends of Colonial Pemaquid group and began on Aug. 9. This year's dig was the result of findings last summer that suggested an excavation pit along the site's Pemaquid Harbor shoreline contained a historically significant feature.
Representatives from all three groups were on site this time, and workers found a curved trench dotted with four-inch diameter post holes: a garden fence, the team believes. Later in the week, the crew uncovered the impressions of at least 15-foot-long beams that likely indicate the location of a previously unknown 17th-century structure, as well as a Dutch clay pipe and prehistoric artifact flakes dating back up to 3,000 years.
"It's hard to dig a hole at Pemaquid for very long without hitting something," says Tom Desjardin, Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands historian.
Originally inhabited by Native Americans known as Wabanakis, the Pemaquid Peninsula was a fishing station and trading outpost for English settlers as early as the 1620s. Three separate forts were constructed on the site over the years, each destroyed by one of many devastating conflicts with the French and Native Americans the settlement faced. Pemaquid was victim to three village-wide burnings and even a 1632 pirate attack, but it continued to rebuild and grow through the 1600s. By the middle of the 18th century, however, the population at Pemaquid had largely dispersed.
"For a long time Pemaquid was the Eastern frontier of America, before it became the United States of America," says Bob Howell, president of Friends of Colonial Pemaquid. "It was considerably bigger than Boston, for example; it was where all the dues and customs fees were paid as boats came in and tariffs as they left, so Pemaquid was a very important site. And when the war with the French backed up, it faded away."
Regular excavation of the site started in 1964 when the then-owner bulldozed the grounds to build tourist cabins (that were never actually built), uncovering parts of the Colonial village.
"It's kind of a double-edged sword," Desjardin says. "It's because he did that we know where the village is and why there's a Colonial Pemaquid and why digging has been done ever since. But on the other hand, when you run a bulldozer across a site, it screws up things really bad."
Lee Cranmer, a historical archaeologist with the Maine Historic Preservation Commission and the director of the dig, says further excavation and analysis will need to be done on the evidence and artifacts found in the roughly 40 by 25 feet area. Plans are in the works to secure funding for additional excavation.
"A lot of work that was done early on in the 60s and 70s was not as scientific as it could have been," Cranmer says. "So we're trying to concentrate more on the details."
Howell, whose wife started the Friends group in 1993, says he plans to propose another dig at the site to the Friends of Colonial Pemaquid board this week.
"We have to decide how we're going to plan our budget and plan our events," Howell says. "Digging will be one of the events we'll be putting money into next year—or I hope to, at least."
For Desjardin, finds like these are only the beginning at Colonial Pemaquid.
"You can dig with a giant team for weeks, and months, and years, and not get to all of it because it's really that rich a site," Desjardin says. "You have this combination of thousands of years of the natives in the area and about a century of Europeans beginning in the late 1500s, early 1600s and all of it's still sort of there under the ground. And almost every time we dig any kind of hole, we find something, so it's neat in that way. There's lots of knowledge to get at and all we've got to do is dig holes."
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