The Hirundo Archaeological Project ‐ an Interdisciplinary Approach to Central Maine Prehistory*

Current Northeast paleoethnobotany

“…By 6,000 B.P., it was a wooded peatland interspersed with upland and became a continually changing peatland complex thereafter. Preliminary stratigraphic studies of Caribou Bog near the margin of Mud Pond (Figure 11.3;Sanger and MacKay 1973) also showed that peatlands were expanding locally at least between 8,000 and 4,000 years B.P. Whitten…”

“…It includes numerous sites from which Indian peoples would have had ready access to wetlands.One nearby site, Hirundo, spans from the Middle Archaic (8,000 years B.P.) through the Historic periods(Sanger et al 1977). The other spans the Late Archaic (6,000 years B.P.)…”

Geoarchaeology at Gilman Falls: An Archaic quarry and manufacturing site in central Maine, U.S.A.

“…This accumulation of flood deposits provides a stratigraphic separation between the cultural zones. In addition, fluvial deposition helps to preserve the integrity of cultural zones in a region where it is not unusual to find much of the Holocene archaeological record compressed into a thin deflated zone (e.g., the nearby Hirundo site [Sanger et al, 1977]). Discovery and interpretation of the preserved fluvial deposits became a major research focus once we realized that we could anticipate finding relatively intact early and middle Holocene occupation components contained in these sediments (Petersen, 1991;Petersen et al, 1986;Petersen and Putnam, 1992;Putnam, 1994;Robinson et al, 1992;Sanger et al, 1992).…”

“…The study area lies within the traditional territory of the Penobscot Indian Nation (Speck, 1940). Prior to the current project, the general area had received some archaeological attention: most notably, research at the Hirundo (Sanger et al, 1977) and Young sites (Borstel, 1982) located 15 km upstream from Gilman Falls on Pushaw Stream. However, until the recent research required by relicensing the reservoir, the region lacked a detailed, systematic site survey.…”

Draft environmental impact statement for construction and operation of the proposed Bangor Hydro-Electric Company`s second 345-kV transmission tie line to New Brunswick

“…Evidence of early prehistoric settlement in the area of the proposed route is confined to isolated artifacts tentatively assigned to the Palaeoindian and Early Archaic periods (11,000-8,000 years ago) (Cox 1989). The Middle and Late Archaic periods (8,000-1,500 years ago) are represented by numerous sites along the Penobscot and Grand Falls rivers and in the Big Lake area (Sanger et al 1977;Bourque 1986, 1988;Belcher 1988). The distribution and contents of these sites reflect a hunting and gathering economy that apparently persisted throughout the Woodland (or Ceramic) period, until the spread of Euro-American settlement approximately 200 years ago.…”