The Archaeology of Vermont

DOCUMENT Full-Text The Louis Berger Group, Inc..

On behalf of Deerfield Wind, LLC, a subsidiary of Iberdrola Renewables, Inc., Portland, Oregon, The Louis Berger Group, Inc. (Berger), Albany, New York, has completed an addendum report to the Phase IB Archaeological Survey for the proposed Deerfield Wind Project in the towns of Searsburg and Readsboro, Bennington County, Vermont. The Phase IB investigation was completed in two stages. Stage 1 took place between October and November 2007; Stage 2 was completed in May 2008. This addendum report...

DOCUMENT Full-Text John P. Hart. C. Margaret Scarry.

A radiocarbon date of A.D. 1070 ± 60 was linked to the remains of maize (Zea mays), beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), and squash (Cucurbita pepo) at the Roundtop site in the Susquehanna River valley of New York by William Ritchie in 1969 and 1973 publications. This date established the presence a/beans in the Northeast at an earlier time than in most other areas a/the eastern United States, where they are generally rare before A.D. 1300. Subsequently beans have been reported in pre-A.D. 1300 contexts...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Matthew Boulanger. Thomas R. Jamison. Craig Skinner. Michael D. Glascock.

An obsidian biface reportedly found in the Connecticut River Valley of Vermont, is the only currently locatable obsidian artifact purported to have been found in Northern New England. As such, it may be evidence for prehistoric long-distance exchange, a product of modern- or historic period trade among artifact collectors, or it may be a modern replica. Four criteria are outlined to assess the artifact’s authenticity as a product of prehistoric trade: provenience, cultural affiliation, age, and...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Stephen Scharoun. Robert N. Bartone.

An archaeological phase IA resource assessment (ARA) of the proposed Rutland Transmission Line Reconductoring Project has been completed by the Northeast Archaeology Research Center, Inc. (NE ARC) on behalf of Central Vermont Public Service (CVPS). The project includes the reconductoring of an existing 2.5-mile transmission line in the Town of Rutland, Rutland County, Vermont. The entire length of the 100 ft wide corridor was assessed including background research and field inspection. A total...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Geo. H. Perkins.

Expanding on an article published in 1879, this piece discusses the archaeology of the Champlain Valley, Vermont. The author compares the archaeology of the valley and other parts of Vermont to archaeological remains in other parts of the Northeast. Perkins concentrates on the description of adzes and/or gouges.

DOCUMENT Full-Text David R. Starbuck.

Twenty years have passed since the first CNEHA bibliography (Starbuck 1986), which included nearly all historical archaeology literature published within the area served by CNEHA up through the fall of 1987. The original CNEHA bibliography consisted of 1,884 citations, reflecting at least 60 years of research in the 7 provinces, 13 states, and the District of Columbia that are represented by CNEHA. In 1987 it may have appeared that traditional publishing would decline and be replaced by the...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Michael Sherman.

Just over two decades ago, Tom Bassett did what I have been asked to do for this symposium: to take a reading on what has been accomplished in Vermont history and assess future needs and directions. He had just completed the work of compiling a bibliography of Vermont history, volume four of the Bibliographies of New England History, a series that continues to this day. It is a surprisingly thick volume: 293 pages, double column, folio size, that includes 6,413 entries. One of the thickest...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Paul Bierman.

In this chapter, we use both original and repeat images of Vermont to document how the landscape has responded to human actions that include deforestation, reforestation, and road building. We use three examples to demonstrate how repeat photography of the same site at different times can be used to document—both qualitatively and quantitatively— landscape response to human actions with the thought that, by examining past landscape responses, we can better inform future land-use decisions. The...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Douglas Frink.

The interdependent dynamics of climate, biota, relief, parent material and time affect the evolution of both soils and archaeological remains within the soil. Carbonized organic matter, charcoal, is one class of archaeological material subject to these environmental factors. Although charcoal is generally presumed to be immune to environmental influences, chemical analyses of feature soils containing charcoal from archaeological sites throughout New England demonstrate its susceptibility to the...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Giovanna Peebles.

From the beginning steps in 1979 to record and learn about the Lake’s submerged heritage, volunteer sportdivers have provided leadership and labor for surveys and documentation studies. Volunteer sportdivers continue to play key roles in fund raising, advocacy, and education and outreach programs about Lake Champlain’s submerged historic heritage. The Vermont model of volunteer sportdivers as vital components of an underwater archaeology program is mirrored in all states that have successful...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Bobbyejo Evon Coke.

Linoleum has been around for over a hundred years. With its invention by Frederick Walton in the 1860’s a new means of durable floor covering was introduced to the world. This new invention was promoted as durable, hygienic, and easy to maintain. In agreement with the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, a study was commissioned to seek the best means to conserve linoleum from a canal boat excavated in the summer of 2002 in Lake Champlain. The Sloop Island Canal Boat is part of an excavation project...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Christina Rieth. Robert J. Hasenstab. Timothy L. Binzen. Edward V. Curtin. Kerry L. Nelson. Jessica Schreyer. Niels R. Rinehart. Brian D. Jones. Philip A. Perazio. David J. Bernstein. Michael J. Lenardi. Sara A. Grills. Brian Grills. Laurie Rush. Amy Wood. Margaret Schulz. Cynthia M. Blakemore. Nancy Herter. Douglas Mackey. Patricia E. Miller. Nina Versaggi. Christopher D. Hohman. Kurt W. Carr.

Small lithic sites (or scatters) represent one of the most common site types identified in the Northeast. These sites are commonly identified in both upland and lowland settings and represent areas where resource extraction, processing, and collection often take place. Some of these small sites may also contain residual evidence of overnight or temporary lodging and meal preparation activities (Piles and Wilcox 1978; Means 1999; Rieth 2003a; Shen 2001). In this way, these small sites offer a...

DOCUMENT Full-Text John P. Hart. Mark A. McConaughy. Nancy Asch Sidell. Elizabeth Chilton. Ninian R. Stein. Tonya Largy. E. Pierre Morenon. Katy Serpa. Timothy C. Messner. Ruth Dickau. Eleanora A. Reber. William A. Lovis. G. William Monaghan. Robert H. Pihl. Stephen G. Monckton. David A. Robertson. Robert F. Williamson. Michael Deal. Sara Halwas. Jeffrey C. M. Bendremer. Elaine L. Thomas. Jack Rossen. John Edward Terrell.

In northeastern North America our understandings of prehistoric human–plant relationships, the subject of paleoethnobotany, continue to change as more samples are taken, examined, and compared to extant records. The results of these analyses are no longer relegated to the appendices of archaeological site reports, but constitute important contributions to our understandings of Native American lifeways in the Northeast, on their own and in combination with other lines of evidence. This volume is...

DOCUMENT Full-Text United States Environmental Protection Agency.

The Elizabeth Mine Superfund site is an abandoned copper and copperas (ferrous sulfate) mine located in the Vermont Copper Belt in the east-central part of the state. The ore body was first discovered in the late 1700s and copperas production began soon after in the early 1800s. Mining activities continued at Elizabeth Mine for nearly 150 years. Over the years, historic tailing piles and waste piles have become a substantial source of acid mine drainage (AMD). The historic significance of the...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Jessica R. Desaney.

This article in the Society for American Archaeology's (SAA) publication The SAA Archaeological Record recounts the excavations of a Historic period fort built by the French in 1666 on Isle La Motte, Vermont, an island on the northern edge of Lake Champlain. The fort was partially excavated in the early 1900's and a small, Catholic shrine to fur traders was built from building material and artifacts. This piece is a reflection on the construction of memory and identity through connections to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean M. Rafferty.

While tobacco use was a widespread and important social practice among Native Americans during the Historic Period, the prehistoric origins of the practice are poorly understood. Smoking pipes significantly predate botanical evidence of tobacco in Eastern North America. A promising technique for addressing this problem is gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy (GC/MS) analysis to identify nicotine or related compounds in smoking pipe residues. GC/MS analysis of a smoking pipe dating to...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Thomas R. Jamison.

Samuel de Champlain reported the presence of Native American groups around the north end of Lake Champlain prior to 1609 (Bassett 1967). However, the archeaology of Grand Isle County, Vermont, has only been minimally examined. Few archaeological sites have been previously identified in the town of Alburg, a pattern that is characteristic of the county overall.. Until recently, most of the sites identified in the town were found by collectors and have not been confirmed by controlled excavation...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Jared Leonard.

Historical archaeology offers unique possibilities to the interpretation of history at house museums. Despite this, archaeology is an under-utilized resource in the museum field. Why is this the case? This question is addressed through an examination of the context of historical archaeology and historic house museums, a qualitative survey of New England museums, and a pair of case studies. Possible reasons for the apparent divide between historical archaeology and historic house museums are...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Robert A. Dunn.

This report deals with the nature and occurrence of impacts to historic properties along the shorelines and in the drawdown zones of Corps of Engineers reservoirs. It presents the survey questionnaire responses obtained from all Corps Districts and describes the management practices observed in field visits to nine Corps reservoirs. This report describes the scope of the "drawdown problem" and the variety of adverse impacts from erosion, biochemical effects, and vandalism. An overview of...

DOCUMENT Full-Text William A. III Patterson. Kenneth E. Sassaman.

Ecologists and archaeologists have long recognized that fires had an important effect on the vegetation of North America prior to the Colonial period. Evidence from areas as widely separated as Alaska (Shackleton 1979), Minnesota (Craig 1972), and Maine (Anderson 1979) shows that fires burned since before the time when humans first emigrated to the continent at the end of the last ice age. It seems likely that the early inhabitants of North America were accustomed to living in environments that...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Adam I. Kane. Christopher Sabick.

Some of the information in this record was migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R). In May of 2013, Digital Antiquity curators found a digital copy of the report and added it to the record along with additional metadata for the general descriptive information about the report. The following text is from the Abstract of the report. The introduction of zebra mussels in the early 1990s and the inevitable approaching infestation of quagga mussels...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Adam I. Kane. Christopher R. Sabick. Sara Brigadier.

The introduction of zebra mussels in the early 1990s and the inevitable approaching infestation of quagga mussels seriously threaten Lake Champlain's underwater cultural resources. These non-native aquatic nuisance species endanger the preservation of submerged cultural resources, obscure them, and hinder their documentation and study. Mussel colonies also threaten to degrade underwater cultural resources physically because of their weight and corrosive action. As of this writing, no effective...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Adam I. Kane. A. Peter Barranco. Joanne M. DellaSalla. Sarah E. Lyman. Christopher R. Sabick.

The introduction of zebra mussels in the early 1990s and the inevitable approaching infestation of quagga mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) seriously threaten Lake Champlain's underwater cultural resources. These non-native aquatic nuisance species endanger the preservation of submerged cultural resources, obscure them, and hinder their documentation and study. In studying this issue, the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum determined that one positive reaction to the situation would be to locate and...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Uploaded by: system user

Over the past several decades, significant improvements in processing capacity and GIS software sophistication have encouraged the development and use of computer based models of archaeological sensitivity to augment traditional research approaches and field investigations. The Vermont Archaeological Sensitivity Model (VTASM), a GIS-based framework for simulating archaeological sensitivity statewide, is a recent example of this trend.

DOCUMENT Full-Text Matthew Boulanger. Thomas R. Jamison.

Archaeologists are particularly interested in identifying evidence of prehistoric long-distance trade and exchange, and artifacts made from stone are some of the best records of such exchange because they can be traced back to specific geological outcrops. Archaeologists often develop an intuitive knowledge about the types of stone and their potential sources that were used prehistorically. In Vermont for example, most archaeologists recognize quartzite from the Cheshire formation or chert from...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Brettan L. Deweese.

This thesis examines prehistoric watercraft documented in the region now inhabited by the Wabanaki, an indigenous maritime society living in New England and the Canadian Maritimes, from archaeological and oral traditions perspectives. Archaeological research has been slow to accept oral traditions as valid, independent sources of evidence. The paucity of prehistoric watercraft and associated tool kits in this study requires exploring Wabanaki prehistory through alternative sources. I gathered...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Elizabeth Boerke.

After years of collaboration, public participation, and strategic planning, the City of Montpelier released their final master plan EnVision Montpelier in the spring of 2010. Like most comprehensive plans, Envision Montpelier articulates clear goals for the City and its residents and outlines specific action steps to help Montepelier realize these desired outcomes over the next twenty years. However, unlike many comprehensive plans today, Montepelier's plan goes several steps further to...

DOCUMENT Full-Text The Louis Berger Group, Inc..

On behalf of Vermont Transco, LLC (VELCO), of Rutland, Vermont, The Louis Berger Group, Inc. (Berger), of Albany, New York, conducted a Phase IB archaeological survey for the proposed Bennington Substation, located in the Town of Bennington, Bennington County, Vermont. VELCO has determined an upgrade of the Bennington 115kV substation is required to meet the Independent System Operator of New England (ISONE) operating and reliability criteria. Subsurface survey was conducted at 18...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Vermont Electric Power Company (VELCO).

This handbook describes the archaeological studies undertaken by the University of Vermont Consulting Archaeology Program (UVM CAP) and the Archaeological Services at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in advance of the Vermont Electric Power Company’s (VELCO) Northwest Reliability Project—the NRP—in Rutland, Addison, and Chittenden Counties, 2005-2007. All of the studies featured in this volume were funded by VELCO.

DOCUMENT Full-Text Elizabeth Baldwin.

The steamship Champlain II, ex-Oakes Ames, was built as a railroad car transfer ferry in 1868 at Marks Bay, Burlington, Vermont in the private shipyard of Napoleon B. Proctor. The vessel was later converted to a passenger line boat in 1873, but was in service only a few years before she was dramatically wrecked on the night of July 16, 1875. Champlain II holds an important place in the development of steamships on Lake Champlain. This thesis examines the historical and economic background of...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Charles Knight.

Georgia Mountain Community Wind, LLC, through Vermont Environmental Research Associates (VERA) is proposing the Georgia Mountain Community Wind Project, Milton, Chittenden County and Georgia, Franklin County, Vermont (Figure 1). The proposed project will provide up to 8 megawatts of electrical capacity using 3-5 wind turbines located on the top of Georgia Mountain, east of Arrowhead Mountain Lake (see Figure 1). Additional project elements include an overhead transmission line that will connect...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Adam I. Kane. Joanne M. Dennis. Scott A. McLaughlin. Christopher R. Sabick.

This report presents the results of a Phase III archaeological investigation of the Sloop Island Canal Boat submerged in the Charlotte, Chittenden County, Vermont waters of Lake Champlain. The archaeological study was undertaken as an off-site mitigation in connection with the Pine Street Canal Superfund site, located in Burlington, Vermont. The archaeological fieldwork at the Sloop Island Canal Boat was conducted during ten weeks in 2002 and 2003 by the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum and...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Anne H. Outwater.

Thompson’s Point on the Vermont side of Lake Champlain is an ecologically important peninsula about 1.5 miles long. Its dolomite cliffs support a rare upland natural community called Limestone Bluff Cedar-Pine Forest. Deep water, in combination with wide shallow bays surrounding the Point, make this one of Lake Champlain’s most important fishing grounds. Individuals at the Point have recently started a website: <www.thompsonspoint.org>. The website developers have agreed that a section of...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Bertrand G. Pelletier. Brian S. Robinson.

The prominence of Munsungun Chert at the Bull Brook Paleoindian site provides a case study for long-distance lithic transport between northern Maine and northeastern Massachusetts, a distance of over 400 kilometers. Paleoenvironmental factors suggest seasonal concentrations of caribou may have occurred at different times of the year, providing the incentive for long-distance seasonal transhumance. Specifically, we look at complementary attractions of an ice-edge environment in proximity to the...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Arthur B. Cohn. Adam I. Kane. Christopher, R. Sabick. Edwin R. Scollon. Justin B. Clement.

This report presents the results from the 1999 through 2004 field seasons of the Valcour Bay Research Project (VBRP), a Phase I underwater archaeological investigation of the submerged battlefield at Valcour Bay, in Lake Champlain. Valcour Bay is located in Clinton County, New York, between the town of Peru and Valcour Island within Lake Champlain. On October 11, 1776, General Benedict Arnold engaged the British Navy in perhaps the most important naval contest of the American Revolution. After...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Giovanna Peebles.

People have lived in Vermont for over 12,000 years. The vast majority of that history is unwritten and becomes known only through the archaeological record. Most often, archaeological investigations in Vermont occur in response to federal and state laws that protect archaeological resources. The Vermont Division for Historic Preservation, serving as the Vermont State Historic Preservation Office (VTSHPO), developed these Guidelines to provide a framework for those activities, as well as guidance...

DOCUMENT Full-Text David M. Lacy. Karl G. Roenke.

Parts of the Appalachian Trail (and nearly half of Vermont's Long Trail) are located on New England National Forests, and managed in partnership with the Appalachian Trail Conference, Green Mountain Club, and other volunteers. Since the Trail corridor is a linear, if serpentine, sample of northern Appalachian highland environments it's not surprising that it often runs on, over, along and/or through a variety of Heritage Resource sites reflecting the rich land-use history of the region. These...