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<< Text Pages >> Pig Point - Ancient Village or Settlement in United States in Mid Atlantic

Submitted by bat400 on Sunday, 05 July 2009  Page Views: 25740

DigsSite Name: Pig Point
Country: United States
NOTE: This site is 25.241 km away from the location you searched for.

Region: Mid Atlantic Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Washington, DC  Nearest Village: Upper Marlboro, MD
Latitude: 38.793300N  Longitude: 76.704W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
3
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Ancient Settlement Anne Arundel Co., Maryland.
An excavation and C14 dating shows a village site dating to 1290 to 1300 AD, although artifacts indicate at least periodic occupation over a much longer time period - thousands of years.

The outlines of multiple oval Algonquian-style wigwams dwellings have been found, along with numerous whole and worn tools, jewelry items, pottery, and food debris.
The excavation has been sponsored by the Maryland Historical Trust. See the attached comments for news stories.
Note: The site given is only approximate.

Note: “This casts all the things we discovered in the first three years in a completely different light. It is a hell of a mystery.” See attached news stories.
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"Pig Point" | Login/Create an Account | 3 News and Comments
  
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Centuries old burial rituals uncovered at Pig Point by bat400 on Tuesday, 23 July 2013
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It might have been the last thing they expected to find. Since 2009, Anne Arundel County’s Lost Towns Project archaeologists have uncovered a trove of prehistoric Native American artifacts along the Patuxent River indicating the spot was a gathering place for thousands of years. Now they think they know why.

This year’s dig at Pig Point uncovered what appears to be a ritualistic burial place with five or more oval pits with human bone and artifacts dating from 230 B.C. to 620 A.D.
“It looks like this was ritual central for 850 years or more,” county archaeologist Al Luckenbach said. “This casts all the things we discovered in the first three years in a completely different light. It is a hell of a mystery.”

Earlier finds suggested it was the area’s bounty (especially the fishing along the Patuxent) that lured bands of tribes to the site. But now it looks like the rituals surrounding the sacred dead — or were they enemies? — are also a key part of the continued occupation.
“This is completely new to science,” Luckenbach said. “And the first time professional archaeologists have been able to glimpse what is really going on in these places.”

Years ago, mostly in the 1930s and 1950s, similar deposits of what is known as Adena flint — tools, arrow and spear points and pipes made of stone found only in quarries in Ohio — have been found along a line stretching from Ohio to Delaware. But those were found long before more modern archaeology and technique were developed. Luckenbach and other Lost Town staffers were amazed to find Adena artifacts at Pig Point on a bluff overlooking Jug Bay. Layer after layer of artifacts were found, one period of material stacked atop another.

The first big find indicating the pre-historic sweep of time were wigwam post holes built on top of one another. The youngest was from the 16th century, the oldest could be 3,000 years old. They are the oldest structures ever uncovered in Maryland.

It was one eureka moment after another, from pottery preceding the birth of Christ to a Palmer point that could be 10,000 years old. Other points found were from 1,000 to 5,000 years old.

Lost Town archeologists were not sure whether to pursue a fourth year digging at Pig Point. When they did, it was decided to dig test pits on an adjoining property just uphill from the previous work. Of the scores of test pits, five proved fruitful.
Most of the 2012 season was spent on just one of the oval pits, actually only one-third of that pit was painstakingly excavated, inch by inch. What they found dwarfs previous work.

But it was the bones that opened up an entirely new realm of discovery.
“We were finding all these pieces of bone. For a few weeks we didn’t know they were human. Until we saw teeth,” he said.
Curiously, all the bone found is long bone, arm or leg bone, and skull fragments. There are no pelvic bone, spine, rib bones.

Early Native American tribes engaged in reburial rituals. Iroquois tribes were noted for their reburial rituals as were the Nanticoke who took their ancestors’ remains with them when they moved to Pennsylvania from the Eastern Shore.

Ossuaries held the the dead whether nothing but skeleton or fresher remains. But the bodies were intact, or mostly so. The difference at Pig Point is that all the bones were smashed, broken on purpose. And so were thousands of artifacts such as fancy Adena points, beads, gorgets, and other items. All broken into bits.

“These are perhaps the most significant discoveries ever made by the (Lost Towns) project,” Luckenbach said. “It is an opportunity to uncover a type of ritual behavior never before seen by science.”

The excavated pit, which was filled with ash and the fractured bone, points, pottery and such, shows evidence the Native Americans returned to the same pit, uncovered it and added more material over the years. “Were they ancestors, or enemies? Or could these be offerings to the gods.

Read the rest of this post...
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County archaeologists uncover Indian site by bat400 on Monday, 06 July 2009
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Submitted by coldrum ---

County archaeologists searching for clues about Native American settlements in what became Anne Arundel County have hit a trove of pottery, arrowheads and perhaps even the remnants of a wigwam near Jug Bay.

The only problem is, they haven't hit their specific target: evidence of the Middle Woodland Period settlement from roughly zero to A.D. 900. Instead, there are plenty of shards of earlier and later settlements, including amazing finds like 10,000-year-old spear points.

"I thought we'd find plenty of it here, but not yet," said Al Luckenbach, county archaeologist. "Just a lot of everything else."

The dig, on property overlooking the Patuxent River near Jug Bay, started when archaeologists and volunteers from the county's Lost Towns Project dug a series of test pits to determine if there was indeed any evidence of prehistoric settlement on the site.

After finding some arrowheads and pottery shards, most decorated with patterns scored in the side of coil-style pots while still wet, wider pits were dug.

One turned up the shells of now locally extinct freshwater clams piled in the corner of the hole right next to what seems to be a fire pit.
"I was thinking we could have a little prehistoric clambake here," Luckenbach quipped.

He said staff from the county's adjacent Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary were excited about the find and contacted a shellfish expert from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who will visit the site to see the white shells herself.

The same pit has yielded other evidence of Indian settlement: a telltale pattern of dark, round spots in the earth, indicative of the saplings stuck into the ground to build a wigwam.

"You see them there, about 6 inches apart," Luckenbach said. But there were two slightly arching rows of the sapling ghosts about a foot apart.

"I can't explain that, yet," he said. "It could mean they returned to the site year after year."

For more, see
Home Town Annapolis.
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Digging for evidence of Maryland's Indian heritage by bat400 on Monday, 06 July 2009
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Anne Arundel County archaeologists have uncovered an Algonquian Indian camp on a bluff above a lush bend in the Patuxent River, a find that includes the oldest human structure ever detected in Maryland.

Artifacts show that the campsite - in a location favored by native people for hundreds of years for its bounty of fish, shellfish and game - was in use two centuries and more before Christopher Columbus set sail from Europe.

The dig has uncovered traces of oval Algonquian wigwams; rare tools of stone, bone and antler; fragments of a highly decorated pot; an intact paint pot; and a broken gorget, a dark stone polished and drilled for use as personal decoration.

"It is clearly the most important prehistoric site in the county, and if it keeps going like this we'll be in the running for the most important prehistoric site in the state," said county archaeologist Al Luckenbach.

Carbon 14 dating on charcoal from a hearth found outside the outline of the wigwam suggests that the site was occupied between 1290 and 1300, making it the oldest dwelling ever discovered in the state, Luckenbach said. Outlines of other dwellings at the site might be older.

Dennis Curry, an archaeologist with the Maryland Historical Trust, calls the Pig Point site "spectacular."

For more discussions of the artifacts found at the site, see
the Baltimore Sun.
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