Tuesday, June 27, 2006

by JimP

© Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center

Above is a photo (posted with permission) of an excavation near an evident rock pile at the Lake of Isles on the Mashantucket Reservation. Not too much is revealed about rock piles in the articles, except an excavation of a mid-19th century chimney fire-box. Nonetheless, it does make for interesting reading. I thought the photo itself was worth posting. Twenty-one archaeological sites were excavated at Lake of Isles dating from 9,000 years ago up until the early 20th century. Other sites on the Reservation are also discussed.

[click here] for the full story.

2 comments :

Tim MacSweeney said...

Reading something somewhere by McBride, I remember him saying the first thing they do is remove the stone "walls" - (or at least discount them as colonial constructions with no investigation) because "Indians didn't do that."

JimP said...

I'd be very surprised by that, especially considering that many of the sites they've excavated on the Reservation were found to be 18th and 19th century farmsteads. The museum itself has an outdoor display of a 19th century Mashantucket farmstead. So, at the very least, he knows darn well Indians built stone walls during that time period.

Perhaps his comment has been taken out of context? For example, if he was talking about a 9,000 year old site, an argument could be made that, "Indians didn't do that 9,000 years ago." Based on what I know of sites of that age all around Southern New England, I'd be inclined to agree.