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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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