http://tinyurl.com/29mwgwj

This is from the State of New Hampshire, BTW.


By MELANIE PLENDA
Union Leader Correspondent
Thursday, Jun. 10, 2010

KEENE – Just beyond the grind of machinery and trucks working to build a state of the art middle school in Keene lays the remnants of the life that used to be there. Before machines, before planes and cars, before the first settlers from strange lands, people were here. They built fires and carved tools, had families, and most of all, existed.

"The history of Keene says that Native Americans never lived here," said Robert Goodby, a Stoddard Archeologist studying the historic finds at the site of the new Keene Middle School off of Maple Avenue. "And here we have evidence of them living here 12,000 years ago. ... It's significant because of its age, that it's so undisturbed and the fact that you can stand here 12,000 years later and speculate that this was someone's home for a short period of time based on where the artifacts are coming from."

Goodby is leading a team of archeologists excavating four areas on the site of the new Middle School. The site in only one of two this old known in Cheshire County -- the other was discovered in the late 1970s in Swanzey -- and only one of 15 of this age in the state. The exact location of the dig is being kept secret to prevent looters from desecrating the sites and to preserve the team's own painstaking work which has continued seven days a week for months.

Goodby was first hired by the Keene School District to examine the historic significance of the site as part of the permitting process to build near a wetland.

And it was good they did, since the team has discovered bits of history dating between 12,000 and 13,000 years old.

"Not very much at all is known about these people," Goodby said. "What is very special about this site is that this is one of the very early sites. These were some of the first people to come into this area and the end of the ice age."

Through digging deep soil test cores all across the flat and wet land area at the site, a geologist was able to get an historical picture of what the area looked like when the first people arrived in what was not yet Keene.

"He was able to determine that the site originally had small streams coming across it from the melting glacier and (the streams) were depositing the sand and creating this level surface," Goodby said. "By the time the first people got here, (the terrace) was exactly where it is now."

He went on to say that at the time the Ashuelot River was also much closer to the site, making it an ideal spot to set up camp, Goodby said.

"It's a nice level sandy terrace right next to a huge wetland. You know there's all sorts of good things to eat and a lot of natural resources there," he said.

The archeologists started out digging in small test areas last fall. Where they found chips of stone, likely from tools, they opened up the area for further exploration. Moving in a methodically slow fashion, the excavators dug one meter squares. They divided those squares into four quarters, each about 50 cm. They then dug down, 5 cm at a time.

"Everything that we find is very precisely located, because, to make sense of what people were doing here, we need an accurate map of where every tool was found," Goodby said. "That's one of the critical things about archeology. A lot of people think, ‘oh archeology means finding lots of cool stuff.' Yeah it does, but what we're really trying to do here is learn about what the people were doing. And we can only do that if we recover the tools scientifically."

So far the artifacts have been found in oval clusters. Goodby speculates that these areas were where the people pitched tents or other shelters.

Primarily, the explorers have found a variety of stone tools that would have been used for processing animal hides, such as scraping tools. They've also found tools for making things out of bone and antlers as well as tools for engraving and splitting. But what's even more significant is what the stone tells the archeologists about the people who used them.

"We're learning for one thing that they had connections that extended all over Northern New England," Goodby said. "They were getting their stone from quarries as far away as northern Maine. And from sources in far north New Hampshire." He said there's evidence some of the stone may have come from Berlin and Jefferson.

He said they may have gotten this by following the caribou migratory routes, as that was their main game animal. He also said it may indicate that they were connected to other bands of people at this time so the stone moved from family to family.

Goodby also believes the type of stone they are finding in Keene as compared to the stone found in Swanzey in the 1970s, will ultimately prove the Keene site is even older than the Swanzey site.

Another exciting find was a stone fireplace that still had remnants of burnt fire wood in it. Next to the hearth, the archeologists also discovered what they believe to be burnt caribou bone. Goodby said testing will be done on the bone to determine the animal and the wood to determine what species of trees were in the area when these people lived there.

Goodby said he has two more weeks to gather what he can from the sites before construction on that part of the property continues on the middle school.

However, the significance of the site will not be lost once the areas are covered over with the new school, said William Gurney, Co-Superintendent of SAU 29.

He said school officials will be building the finds into the curriculum so that students will understand the importance of the history right there in their backyard. He also said replicas of the stone tools will be on permanent display inside the school.

"The curriculum has been a little bit lacking when it comes to the original inhabitants in New England," Gurney said. "Now the students will be able to hold replicas of the actual artifacts in their hands and see exactly what the real tools looked like and touch and hold them…. It's just great."

Further, the school district will receive a comprehensive report on the findings and Goodby also expects to give lectures and publish his findings at some point. Though a scientist through and through, Goodby can't hide his excitement for what they are discovering.

"To put it in context, I have been doing archeology for 25 years," he said. "And this is the neatest site I've ever seen. This is really a very important site."