UMaine Archaeological Field School in Machias
Contact: Prof. Brian Robinson (581-2174) or Prof. Lisa Neuman (581-4489)
MACHIAS — The University of Maine’s annual archaeological field school is underway this summer on Machias Bay in eastern Maine. The field school offers nine UMaine students and a small group of volunteers a month- long intensive field work experience focusing on the excavation of Maine’s endangered “coastal shell middens” and working with Maine’s Wabanaki communities.
UMaine students and faculty members are supporting Passamaquoddy research and preservation efforts on the Machias Bay petroglyphs (rock art), in association with the Malush-hikon Petroglyph Foundation. Machias Bay contains the highest concentration of petroglyphs, in the form of human and animal forms pecked on smooth bedrock surfaces, on the East coast of North America. The petroglyphs span 3,000 years, with some of the latest figures including European sailing ships. Preservation is a key concern, with petroglyphs exposed to waves and storms, as well as to the sandy grit on the shoes of visitors. Through the combined efforts of the tribe, local landowners and the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, the largest petroglyph site, in Machiasport, was transferred from private ownership to the Passamaquoddy tribe in 2006.
The Passamaquoddy are developing plans for an interpretive center to both educate and preserve this part of Wabanaki heritage. The UMaine field school is helping to evaluate nearby occupation sites that ring Machias Bay in proximity to the petroglyph sites. The field school is funded by a grant from UMaine’s Maine Academic Prominence Initiative (MAPI) with the express purpose of investigating endangered shell midden sites. Shell middens include the refuse of Native American and Euro-American settlements, in which clam shells were discarded with the bones of seal and sturgeon and other food animals. In the past these middens were often dug over by local collectors who sometimes donated their finds to local museums. As a result, few undisturbed sites remain. With rising sea level, even the disturbed sites are almost certain to be lost.
“Because earlier collectors were often not interested in the animal bones and other kinds of cultural refuse, there is much to be learned from careful excavation of sites that appear badly disturbed,” says Prof. Brian Robinson of the UMaine anthropology faculty. “So far this year we have uncovered the remains of two probable house floors that survived in patches between former excavations.”
Artifacts from the ancestors of the Passamaquoddy as well as early French settlers have been found, Robinson says.
Robinson and Prof. Lisa Neuman of the UMaine Anthropology Department direct the field school, along with laboratory manager Stephen Bicknell who is a veteran of many UMaine excavations conducted by Professor Emeritus David Sanger. Excavations will also be conducted later in the season for the Passamaquoddy petroglyph project directed by the Passamaquoddy tribal historian Donald Soctomah and petroglyph archaeologist Mark Hedden.
“Native American sites dot the coastline but the petroglyph art is an especially effective way of communicating Native culture and beliefs,” Robinson says. “Why was Machias Bay the focus of 3,000 years of rock art? How far did people come to the bay and what other specialized activities may have accompanied the production of petroglyphs? Those are among the questions we are working to answer through these projects, which are themselves in their early years of development.”