Winter Walk for the Wild 2005

ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE ALLAGASH
Arthur Spiess 2004
November 28, 2004

Stemmed Point, about 7,000 years old from Eagle Lake.

What we learn about the distant past in the Allagash must come from archaeology and related sciences, simply because no written or "historic" records were created until Europeans arrived. We must leave some of the most basic questions about prehistoric people unanswered. For example, we shall never know their names for themselves, or the details of their religious beliefs. We can infer some things about their lives from reading the earliest historic documents from Maine, dating from about 1600 along the coast. However, there are no written records of life in the Allagash region until the 1800s. By then Maine Native Americans were guiding hunters and the first tourists through the Maine woods, such as Henry David Thoreau, in their expertly made birchbark canoes.

Density of sedge plants at the end of the last ice age.

The first people in Maine moved in from the south or west about 11,000 years ago, as measured by radiocarbon dating. The land was recovering from the last ice age. Ice in northernmost Maine, including the upper St. John River valley, melted slowly. Ice and glacial debris "dams" blocked up large lakes in what are now river valleys. Northernmost Maine was covered by a sedge and grass tundra-like environment around these lakes until about 11,000 years ago, and caribou herds roamed the New England landscape. Then trees quickly invaded the landscape: spruce, birch and poplar were first, then fir, oak and other hardwoods. Since about 10,000 years ago, Maine has been covered by dense forest, and the large lakes had drained closer to recent lake levels.

We call the first people in Maine "Paleoindian." They chipped distinctive, well made spear points and other stone tools from high quality chert or flint-like rock. They moved over long distances on foot, perhaps 400 or 500 miles in a year within New England, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and hunted caribou, beaver and other small mammals for a living, camping only for a short time in each spot. Some of the chert bedrock outcrops they visited regularly are in the Munsungun Lake area, only about 15 miles east of the Allagash. Perhaps only a few dozen families of Paleoindians lived in all of New England, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia at the time, and Quebec was mostly uninhabited because of glacial ice on the north shore of the St. Lawrence. For a thousand years or more, the Allagash region was one of the northernmost inhabited places in the eastern portion of North America.

Broken Paleoindian spearpoint and an endscraper or whittling tool from Eagle Lake

After 10,000 years ago, with the growth of heavy forest cover, that included large spruce, hemlock and pine, life changed dramatically. For a few thousand years, roughly 9000 to 6000 years+ ago, the climate was a little warmer than it is now. Archaeological sites, during what we call the Archaic period (10,000 to about 4,000 years ago) are located along Maine's lake and river shorelines. Large, heavy stone woodworking tools such as adzes, gouges, and axes become common; and we presume that one of the products made with these tools was

Dugout Canoe Reproduction

large dugout canoes. Dependence on heavy dugout canoes to some degree limited mobility, because they could not be portaged. Dugout canoes were probably made and left where they could be floated, with a system of foot trails connecting major bodies of water. During the Archaic period Maine Native Americans hunted moose and deer and fished and gathered wild plant food. Nets were available (we know from rare preserved impressions on stone objects), woven basketry and birch bark containers were made, and people concentrated at good seasonal fishing locations. At one such location in central Maine a series of wooden stakes preserved in lake mud form the lines of several fish weirs or traps, as old as 6000 years old.

Archaeological sites in the Allagash from the Archaic period are plentiful, but most have been eroded by high water levels on the major lakes. Recognizable tools found in the Allagash are the stone axes and gouges for wood working. Cooking was done mostly by the technique of heating stones and dropping them into a bark or wooden container, so fire-burned rock is common on Archaic age sites.

Sometime between 4000 and 3500 years ago, the birchbark canoe was developed here in Maine, or its use was adopted from nearby in the upper Great Lakes or the Maritimes Provinces. Use of such light, back-portable watercraft allowed travel up and down small streams and beaver flowages, and allowed cross-drainage portaging. Thus, the birch-bark canoe opened up the Maine interior away from its major lakes and rivers.
No birchbark canoes are preserved as archaeological artifacts. We think that this time is when birchbark canoe use started because heavy woodworking tools such as gouges and axes become much less common, and archaeological sites dating between 4000 and 3000 years ago show up commonly along small drainages that would not be accessible by dugout canoes.

Archaeologists refer to the Ceramic period in Maine (3000 to 500 years ago, or 1000 B.C. to A.D. 1500) because Maine's Native Americans adopted the use of pottery. The pottery was low-temperature fired from local clays, and not very durable. But it allowed cooking directly in a fire hearth. Prehistoric pottery scraps are found rarely in the Allagash, probably because they do not survive well once they are eroded into the waves and ice along a lake shore.

For most of prehistory, Maine's Native American population supported itself by hunting, fishing and gathering in band organized societies without complex political organization. In southwestern Maine corn, bean and squash gardening was added to an existing hunting and gathering economic base after about 1000 A.D. without drastic change in social organization and with only subtle changes in the use of the landscape.

Spear Point, About 3000 years old from Eagle Lake

Ceramic period side-notched point, about 800 years old, from Eagle Lake

Maine Native Americans always have been relatively mobile in lifestyle and lived in relatively small groups. The largest and most prominent occupations were multi-seasonal villages of several hundred (up to 1000) people along the coast, from which most of the population would depart and disperse over the landscape at certain seasons. Economic activities (such as food processing, tool maintenance, production of objects such as canoes, snowshoes, clothing, and for the last 3,000 years pottery making), may have been controlled to some degree by seasonal availability of raw material, but the manufacturing activities occurred at a wide range of locations. Craft specialization was minimal, and most households produced most of what they needed themselves. Trade was confined to exchange of raw materials and perhaps foodstuffs, and a few finished products. There is enough archaeological evidence around the Allagash lakes to infer that a group of people lived here

through most or all of the seasons during the Ceramic period. But we know little about the details of their lives, for example what types of dwellings they lived in during the winter. Nor do we know whether they were more closely related to people in the St. John drainage or to the south in the Moosehead drainage.

A painting of Indian life about 1800 A.D.

about 1600 along the coast. However, there are no written records of life in the Allagash region until the 1800s. By then Maine Native Americans were guiding hunters and the first tourists through the Maine woods, such as Henry David Thoreau, in their expertly made birchbark canoes.

Site Protection

Erosion, vandalism and development can destroy an archaeological site. Because most prehistoric sites in Maine are/were located along the shore of a body of water, erosion is perhaps the greatest threat. Erosion can be entirely natural, or it can be caused by human actions that raise water levels and allow waves and ice to chew away at archaeological deposits that were formerly on dry land. The Allagash is a perfect case in point, where the water levels have been raised for at least a century on some of the lakes, first by timber-industry dams and then by water storage dams. Only a minority of archaeological sites have survived around the Allagash lakes without being completely eroded.

DO NOT COLLECT OR DISTURB ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES IN THE ALLAGASH

Artifacts within the Restricted Zone are the property of the State and their disturbance, removal, or possession is prohibited, except as specifically permitted by the Director of the Bureau of Parks and Lands...." Persons violating this rule may be subject to a summons and a fine. Persons caught digging in sites specially protected under state law, and posted as such, may be prosecuted for a criminal offense.

Information on these pages was very generously given by Dr. Arthur Spiess and the Maine Historic Preservation Commission. The MHPC retains all copyright to this material.

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