108 CHAPTER 5 | Field Methods in Archaeology and Paleoanthropology
Anthropology AppliedCultural Resource Management
In the United States and Europe,
cultural resource management or
“regulatory” archaeology employs
more archaeologists than universities
and museums combined. This work is
mandated by laws like Section 106 of
the National Historic Preservation Act,
which requires a cultural resources re-
view for federally funded or regulated
development projects, like the construc-
tion of new highways. These federal
requirements have provided the funds
for me and many other archaeol ogists to
do what we love the best: to re construct
the lives of people in the past through
excavation of the material traces they
have left behind.
For example, the Vermont Agency of
Transportation’s Missisquoi Bay Bridge
Project at the northern end of Lake
Champlain resulted in the discovery of
one of the most significant archaeologi-
cal sites ever found in Vermont. The
initial Phase I survey sampling for the
project included the excavation of small
shovel test pits across the level field
that would one day become the new
bridge approach. Seven of the initial
fifty-seven pits contained evidence of
an archaeological site, including a total
of just eight artifacts. Fortunately, this
limited evidence was enough to docu-
ment the presence of a pre-contact
Native American habitation, later
named the Bohannon site after the
landowner.
To determine its size and sig-
nificance, we conducted a Phase IIevaluation of the site. Native American
deposits were recovered from thirty-
nine of the additional sixty-seven
Phase II test pits excavated. The
majority of the artifacts recovered
are small fragments of clay pottery,
including a portion of a turtle head ef-
figy from a pipe or vessel. It was this
artifact, the likes of which had never
before been excavated in Vermont,
which helped indicate the site was
significant and eligible for the National
Register of Historic Places. The effigy,
and the style and thickness of pottery
shards, indicated the site dated to
the late pre-contact or contact period,
between about 1400 and 1700. Since
the site could not be avoided during
construction, Phase III data recovery
excavations were necessary to salvage
a sample of the endangered site.
It was only during this final phase
of work that the true size and sig-
nificance of the Bohannon site was
revealed. Excavation of large areas
uncovered a substantial sample
of decorated clay pipes and jars.
Paleobotanist Nancy Sidell
identified corn kernels
and parts of corn plants in
hearth and trash pit fea-
tures at the site, indicating
that the residents of the
site grew corn close by.
Zooarchaeologist Nanny
Carder identified twenty-
four different species in
bone refuse from the same
features, revealing a broad
diet of animals ranging
from flying squirrel to
black bear. Living floors,
trash pits, and the former
location of house posts
also were identified.
To salvage as much infor-
mation as pos sible from the
site before construction, an
acre of the project area was
stripped of topsoil to try to
determine more about the
layout of the site. Hun dreds
of post “mold” stains were
revealed, from which por-
tions of several longhouses
have been reconstructed.
A sample of corn kernels
found was radiocarbon
dated using acceleratormass spectrometry (AMS) to around
AD 1600. Other dates and their error
ranges place the site occupation between
1450 and 1650.
We believe the site was occupied
just prior to 1609, when the first Eu-
ropeans entered the region, based on
the style of the pottery, the radio carbon
dates, and the fact that no European
artifacts were recovered. The decorated
clay pipes and pottery jars from the
site are identical to material that has
been found at late pre-contact village
sites along the St. Lawrence River in
Quebec. The inventory of artifacts, food
resources, and house patterns from the
site all suggest that the people at the
Bohannon site were closely related to
the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, a First
Nations people who lived in what is now
Quebec and Ontario.
From its humble identification in the
early stages of archaeological survey for
the new bridge, the Bohannon site has
yielded an incredible amount of informa-
tion; it represents the first St. Lawrence
Iroquoian village discovered in Vermont.CANADAUNITED STATESVERMONTVERMONTAtlantic
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