The Dig
Chilmark Works to Uncover its Wampanoag Roots
“We’ve lost 12 feet of cliff since last August,” said Harvard University professor Elizabeth Chilton, who is leading the dig. Although the normal rate of erosion at this site is 5.6 feet a year, high winds, heavy rains and a wet spring have taken their toll on the hill that once sloped down into an arable meadow before merging with the ocean. Dr. Chilton estimates that two-thirds of the hill has been lost since the 18th century.
The dig, which began June 22 and will close next week, is a cooperative venture between the town of Chilmark, the Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah, the Massachusetts Historical Commission and Harvard University. A team of four instructors and 14 students are excavating the site as part of the university’s summer field school program. The site is protected and is not open to the public, but interested residents are encouraged to stop by the Excavation laboratory that has been set up at the Menemsha School. Lab hours are from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.
“For at least the past 8,000 years and possibly longer, this site was used, probably as a seasonal encampment, by Native Americans,” said Dr. Chilton at the site on Wednesday. She spoke about the excavation Thursday as part of the Chilmark Community Center’s lecture series. “We have artifacts that date to the 1600s — smoking pipes, gun flints, pieces of pottery. So far we can say that they were making stone tools, that they were eating shellfish. There’s evidence of deer, so they were hunting deer. They were fishing. There’s evidence of wigwams, wooden structures that have long since decomposed. We’re really beginning to see a complete picture of what seasonal life might have been here.”
Dr. Chilton will spend the next year writing a report about what was uncovered in only five weeks of digging, a report that will be made available to the public. Although a lot has been learned in the past five weeks, she indicated, the truth is that the Harvard team could spend all summer digging and not scratch the surface of the rich archaeological record that exists at the site. In fact, the dig, one of only a handful of comprehensive digs that have taken place on the Vineyard since the late 1960s, illuminates the need for more thorough excavations. The need is especially urgent up-Island, as previous archaeological work concentrated in cove areas down-Island.
“This is the first time we’ve been involved in this kind of an effort,” said Brett Stearns, associate planner of the tribe’s natural resources department. “It exemplifies how cooperative efforts can be made for preservation by all parties and will carry us forth in future cooperative ventures. The tribe and both towns have many common issues.” Mr. Stearns said that the Wampanoag Tribal Council is assertive about protecting historic and culture remains.
As time passes, sites of historic and archaeological importance on the Island are increasingly threatened by erosion, development and illegal looting. Consequently, all parties look forward to more cooperative ventures in the future.
Tribe members Randi Jardin was sponsored by Harvard to participate in the dig.
“I have a lot of interest in archaeology, because to me the past is our support for what we are and who we are. So I think it’s important that we have someone from the tribe who knows a little bit about archaeology,” said Mr. Jardin. “There are a lot of people, private landowners, who I wish would let the tribe and archaeologists come in and document their sites, because although we’re losing a lot of these sites to natural erosion, we’re losing a lot more to development and human neglect.”
At the top of a winding path cut through wild roses and scrub, Dr. Chilton’s students were busy Wednesday with trowels and tape measures in 15 pits staked off and outlined by miniature red flags. Yellow caution tape near the cliff’s edge warned the diggers not to step farther. A blue tent was pitched to one side — a shelter for records, papers and various pieces of equipment. At the opposite side, students manned three wooden sifters set up on a growing mount of dirt, and looked out on kayakers traversing the peaceful Chilmark Pond.
“You really get a good feeling of why people chose this site, why they wanted to live here,” said Dianna Doucette, a Harvard graduate student who is the dig’s head teaching fellow.
Kneeling on a patch of orange dirt, Dr. Chilton explained her work. Holding a piece of pottery no more than two inches long and one inch wide, Dr. Chilton decided that it was once part of a large cooking pot.
“The Natural Resources Conservation Service came out and did ground penetrating radar two weeks before we got started,” she said. “They’re coming back on Monday to help us interpret their results and correlate where they indicated there are features with where we’ve actually found something.” Features are what archaeologists call dark stains in the earth that indicate human activity, Dr. Chilton explained.
There isn’t time to excavate everything, so the team’s primary goal is to map and identify the site’s features.
“We carefully shovel off the first 12 inches,” a mixture of ancient artifacts and historic junk indicating that at one point the site was plowed, Dr. Chilton said. The dirt is screened through one-quarter inch screening. At the bottom of the plowed area the team switched to hand trowels and began detailed mapping of the dark stains and the location of artifacts within them. All artifacts are bagged, brought to the laboratory, cleaned, inventoried and rebagged. The data eventually will be entered into the computer.
The extent of what can be learned from just one grain of corn, for example, is astounding.
“We have a woman back at Harvard who analyzes charred plant remains,” Dr. Chilton said. “She can tell you the species of wood from a piece of charcoal. We know this land was forested at some point, and she can help us reconstruct what was here at different time periods. The charred maize kernels we can radio carbonate. That can help to reconstruct diet.”
Euro-American artifacts found at the site show that it was used by Native Americans following European contact. Native American artifacts recovered include a 3,000-year-old bowl made of stone from either Rhode Island or central Massachusetts — evidence of trading with the mainland — and one spear point dating back 7,500 years.
Previous investigations by Massachusetts Historical Commission archeologists in February 1995 and October 1996 show that the site was used as a Native American burial ground. The 1995 investigation was organized after individuals walking the beach discovered the remains of two adults who had fallen from the cliff. A pit containing shell, charcoal, animal bones, chipped stone and a broken pottery vessel was excavated. The human remains were analyzed and transferred to the Commission on Indian Affairs for reburial.
The cooperative venture took form when Dr. Chilton was searching for a site for the field school this summer and state archaeologist Brona Simon suggested Lucy Vincent Beach.