County archaeologists uncover Indian site

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.

Another pit, 5 feet by 5 feet, bore more shards and arrowheads, evidence of Late Woodland Period settlement.

"The bow and arrow were not invented (locally) until 800 or 900 A.D., the end of the Middle Woodland," Mr. Luckenbach explained.

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."

Luckenback thinks the wigwam dates from A.D. 500 and could be the oldest structure ever found in Maryland.

Jane Cox, assistant director of the Lost Towns Project, crouched on the ground, barely scraping the surface of the pit's dirt with the edge of her trowel. Each pass of the trowel made the now dark smudges, where the saplings once supported the rest of the wigwam's structure, stand out.

But within minutes the dry air would render the surface pale again, and she'd have to scrape again, hoping to set up a photograph of the pattern for the project's records.

"Ooh-hoo," she exclaimed, reaching into the dirt. She opened her hand to reveal a dusty arrowhead, fully intact, with spiked edges.

"I think that's a Kanawha point," said Shawn Sharpe, Lost Towns' field director. "Or maybe its a Kessel or St. Albans."

According to "Prehistoric Projectile Points Found Along the Atlantic Coastal Plain" by William Jack Hranicky, it looked a little like a Selby Bay point, named for the settlements around the South River where county historic sleuths also have dug during this three-year study period.

Luckenbach believes generations of Native Americans came to the spot along the Patuxent to feast on the water's bounty.

"For 10,000 years, we think, they were here on this promontory overlooking the river for a period in spring or fall, then would move on to another camp," he said, perhaps working inland to take advantage of berries, deer and other game.

The study, funded by a grant from the Maryland Historical Trust beginning last year, is delving into the Middle Woodland Period.

Some 500 sites have been noted across the county over the years. Luckenbach and the Lost Towns crew have mapped about 150 likely sites, and hope to narrow their focus down to about "seven of the best ones where we find intact Middle Woodland settlement."

He said one of the key questions to be answered is when corn was introduced into the culture.

"In the Middle period the Algonquin arrive, but they don't have corn; they don't need it with all the Patuxent and the bay offer," he said. "At some point they begin cultivating. I think it is in the Middle period, but no one has proved it yet."

So far the site has yielded bags of pottery and points, even a broken gorget, a roughly quarter-moon shaped ornament worn around the neck.

They are treasures of the past that only pose more questions.