Laying the Foundation, Ross Moffett and Cape Cod Archaeology

Author(s): Francis McManamon

Year: 2008

Summary

Beginning in October 1978, and continuing until June 1979, I spent twenty-two days at the R.S. Peabody Foundation for Archaeology in Andover, Massachusetts, working on Ross Moffett's collections. I was doing this because the National Park Service (NPS), for who I was then the regional archeologist, was planning a park-wide archeological survey at Cape Cod National Seashore. It would be the first overall investigation of the archeological record of the park since Ross Moffett had provided a summary of his knowledge about sites on the outer Cape in 1962. Reviewing his field notes, maps, and profile drawings, I tried to delineate different site components when possible. The collections from Small's Swamp, Warren's Field, Pilgrim Spring, Freeman Paine, and Seth’s Swamp were particularly useful with quite a bit of contextual information about the site area, stratigraphy, and excavations available in Moffett's notebooks and field records.

Cite this Record

Laying the Foundation, Ross Moffett and Cape Cod Archaeology. Francis McManamon. Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society. 69 (1): 2-5. 2008 ( tDAR id: 365539) ; doi:10.6067/XCV82F7KC1

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

Keywords

Culture
Early Woodland • Euroamerican • Late Archaic • Late Woodland • Middle Woodland

Material
Ceramic • Chipped Stone • Ground Stone • Shell

Site Name
Fort Hill, Eastham • Freeman Paine, Wellfleet • High Head, North Truro • Pilgrim Springs • Seth's Swamp • Small's Swamp • Warren's Field

Site Type
Agricultural or Herding • Artifact Scatter • Domestic Structures • Fish Trap / Weir • Hearth • Ossuary • Palisade • Refuse Pit • Road, Trail, and Related Structures or Features • Settlements • Sheet Midden • Shell Midden • Storage Pit • Trash Midden

Investigation Types
Archaeological Overview • Collections Research • Methodology, Theory, or Synthesis • Records Search / Inventory Checking • Research Design / Data Recovery Plan

Geographic Keywords
Barnstable County • Cape Cod • Eastham, MA • Outer Cape Cod • Provincetown, MA • Southeastern Massachusetts • Southern New England • Truro, MA • Wellfleet, MA

Temporal Keywords
Contact Period • Prehistoric Period

Spatial Coverage

min long: -70.271; min lat: 41.816 ; max long: -69.895; max lat: 42.115 ;

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