Museum Excavations
WITH A T.WO-FOLD purpose of stimulating undergraduate interest in archaeology and increasing our knowledge of the American Indian, the Dartmouth College Museum is sponsoring a series of archaeological excavations in the upper Connecticut River valley in an attempt to determine when the Indians first entered New England.
In announcing the Museum's plans, Prof. W. Wedgwood Bowen, director of the College Museum, said that in the past most archaeological research had been done by graduate students and little or no opportunity has been given college undergraduates to participate in this work.
The excavations will be made under the supervision of Elmer Harp Jr., assistant curator of the Dartmouth Museum, who has already made preliminary investigations in the river valley above White River Junction, Vt.
According to Mr. Harp, immediate attention will be given to those areas which will be flooded when the new dam at Wilder, Vt., is completed in 1949. Several sites have already been located on land which will be inundated.
Approximately 15 sites have already been mapped by Mr. Harp along the Connecticut River and its tributaries. Through the years since the valley was first settled by white men, farmers in this area have discovered pieces of pottery, arrowheads, and other archaeological evidence of Indian settlements, but nothing has been done to piece this information together.
"Archaeologists believe that the American Indian crossed the Bering strait from what is now Siberia about 25,000 years ago," Mr. Harp explained when the Museum's plans were announced. "Some think he may have worked his way into New England from Canada about 10,000 years ago. There is no concrete evidence, however, to support a belief that Indians had reached the upper Connecticut River valley before 100 A.D."
Mr. Harp said that two methods will be used to find new sites for excavation. The first will be to contact farmers in the upper Connecticut valley who have found bits of pottery and other artifacts while ploughing their land. Several farmers who have found such objects have already offered their help and Mr. Harp hopes others will.
The second method will be to seek out logical sites suitable for settlement by a nomadic people. Most of these are likely to be found at the mouths of streams emptying into the Connecticut River. Already ten such sites have been located between White River Junction and Haverhill.
The size of these Indian settlements has not yet been determined, but it is believed that it was not very large. The first Indians to enter the valley undoubtedly came for short periods to hunt and fish.
Mr. Harp said that archaeologists believe the probable path of Indians entering the American continent from Asia was along the edge of the Rocky Mountain Plains, throughout southern Canada north of the Great Lakes, through the St. Lawrence valley and into northern New England.
During the next few years Mr. Harp plans to trace this path back into
DARTMOUTH ARCHAEOLOGISTS INVESTIGATE INDIAN SETTLEMENT SITE in the upper Connecticut River Valley: Left to right, Larry K. Coachman '47 of Schenectady, N. Y., Bartlett Mayo, Lyme (N. H.) farmer, and Elmer Harp Jr., assistant curator of the Dartmouth College Museum, examine a find while searching this past fall for artifacts at the site of an Indian settlement once located on Mr. Mayo's farm.
