The Lewis Walpole Library, a department of Yale University Library, was founded by Yale graduate Wilmarth S. Lewis (1895-1979) and his wife Annie Burr Lewis (1902-1959), who bequeathed the property, buildings, and collections to the university. The Library is located on fourteen acres along the Pequabuck River in Farmington and has a history of archaeological exploration, first by Lewis' groundskeeper William Day and later by students in Yale-conducted field schools. Jeremy Pilver, an experienced and registered professional archaeologist, is a Social Studies teacher at Farmington High School. In June 2013, students enrolled in Pilver's Anthropology and Archaeology class, participated in an archaeological field school on the Walpole Library's property. This provided an excellent community outreach opportunity for the Library in a new and exciting way. This partnership helped to foster interest in archaeology through an interactive practical experience at a site offering the potential for discoveries spanning millennia.

For three days, students worked under the supervision of Pilver and volunteers from the Friends of the Office of State Archaeology. Identifying the datum point used during the Yale excavations proved impossible, therefore the southwestern corner of the property was chosen because it potentially avoided previous site work and its proximity to prior evidence of tool manufacturing. In preparation for the field work, students spent four weeks learning about the purposes, possibilities, methodologies, challenges, and ethical guidelines of archaeology, as well as the prehistory of North America. They also devised research questions in order to guide their investigation and focus on the trade networks and land-use patterns of indigenous people in Farmington. The students carefully bagged and labeled numerous prehis-toric artifacts, including chert and flint debitage, a complete projectile point, scrapers, pieces of a steatite bowl, a hammerstone, pestle, and an especially fine example of a Paleo-Indian tool called a graver. Also found and conserved were historic materials including nails, clay pipe stems, glass, and a small, metal toy soldier. They then meticulously documented every stage of the project both photographically and in writ-ing. This hands-on experience clearly made an impact on the students, who returned to the Library later in the month to discuss the project and present their findings to the public. Preliminary analysis of the data confirms some findings from the previous site report, written by David Starbuck of Yale, which identified a deep plow zone at the site, 40-50 cm below datum in some areas (Starbuck, 1992).

In this stratigraphic profile, historic material mixed readily among the prehistoric, as well as charcoal and a few fire-cracked rocks. The site has been classified as Middle Archaic, since the majority of diagnostic artifacts in undisturbed layers of subsoil were typically from this period. Our excavation revealed archaeological components from the Paleo-Indian through the European contact period existed throughout and were limited to the plow zone. The quartzite graver, typically identified as part of the Paleo-Indian "toolkit," was discovered at 47.5cm below datum in context with a change in soil composition. No other artifacts were found in context with the graver. Interestingly, the size of the point on the graver matched precisely with the size of the hole on a small, decorative shell-pendant found in the Walpole's collection from previous collection. All excavated artifacts were carefully processed and catalogued by Pilver into a digital database to be provided to the library. The materials for the excavation were provided through grants by the Farmington Public Schools Foundation and a donation from the Flaggstead Smokehouse in Farmington.

Significant assemblages of debitage, including one small piece of jasper likely sourced from the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, provided evidence of a wide trade network. Other artifacts provided possible evidence of local and imported stone tool manufacturing, butchering, and tool refashioning. In Lucianne Lavin's recent work, Connecticut's Indigenous People, the site was described as consisting of "many recurring seasonal camps where hunting and butchering occurred" (Lavin 2012: 80). Although we were unable to clearly identify seasonal patterns of settlement, evidence of industry was widespread. Despite numerous features having been discussed in Starbuck's site report, no major hearths or roasting platforms were found during our excavation (Starbuck, 1992). This could be the result of the limited area in which we conducted our excavation, the location of our units, or the deep plow zone. Further excavation could provide evidence to each of these points, or suggest a distinction in how this region of the site was used in the past. Two, small pieces of likely Late Woodland period ceramics were found, but the fragments were too small to provide sufficient information for typing. In the deeper layers of most units, there were noticeably fewer artifacts and a complete absence of historic material. Besides the previous conclusions regarding prehistoric industry at the site, little in terms of interpretable patterns could be discerned from the distribution of artifacts, likely the result of numerous disturbances to the site. Plans for future investigations include a test-pit survey in the wooded areas along a cliff abutting the Pequabuck River, and to continue excavations in search of additional evidence of manufacturing, trade, and land-use patterns.

The Library looks forward to Jeremy Pilver's return in June of 2014 with another class of Farmington students.

References:

Lavin, Lucianne, Connecticut's Indigenous Peoples: What Archaeology, History and Oral Traditions Teach Us About Their Communities and Cultures, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2012

Starbuck, David The Lewis-Walpole Site (6-HT45), The New Hampshire Archaeologist 33:73-86, 1992