A Well-Travelled Route: 7,500 Years of Occupation along the Missisquoi River, Northwestern Vermont—The Vermont Agency of Transportation Route 78 Project

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Vermont Route 78 follows the Missisquoi River into its floodplain and out to Lake Champlain, and in doing so crosses a rich archaeological landscape. Since 1999, archaeological excavations have been undertaken in advance of safety upgrades to this major east-west route, and although necessarily a narrow slice along the road corridor, the results document continuity in Native American occupation over approximately 7,500 years. This paper focuses on the Headquarters and Porcupine sites, which underwent phase III data recovery in 2013. The integrity of these sites is exceptional, with cultural features, living surfaces, and artifacts preserved in a sealed, layered alluvial setting. These extensive, stratified sites contain intact components dating to the Middle and Late Archaic, the entire span of the Woodland period, and the early Contact and early historic Euroamerican settlement periods. Archaeological evidence includes virtually the entire range of Vermont Native ceramics (over 300 separate vessels), remnants of a Native American longhouse dating to ca. A.D. 1200, and products of horticulture including maize, beans, squash, tobacco, and sunflower, suggesting the presence of a village of considerable size. The project also provided an ideal setting for a substantial Public Education and Outreach program given project accessibility and visibility.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24270