COVERING THE GAMUT OF PREHISTORY

The excavation of the Barton site in northwestern Maryland has yielded artifacts representing thousands of years of human occupation.

By David Malakoff

Over the last 20 years, archaeologist Robert Wall and a loose-knit team of professional and amateur researchers have been investigating a floodplain along the North Branch of the Potomac River near Cumberland. Their labor has yielded thousands of artifacts, from crumbling pottery sherds and chert chips to exquisite bone combs and stone pendants. And it has revealed a constellation of settlements— dubbed the Barton complex—along more than a mile of riverbank. The finds have helped archaeologists finetune, and in some cases rethink, their understanding of the region’s human prehistory, which Wall thinks may go back some 12,000 years.

But Wall says he’s only scratched Barton’s surface. He believes the site’s unusually deep, undisturbed soils still hold a trove of untold tales about the people who once inhabited the slender valley. “It has a little something from nearly every phase of prehistory,” he says.

“That’s what makes it interesting.” And the exploration of this cornfield could even help solve some long-running mysteries, such as why some early inhabitants abruptly disappeared some 400 years ago.

Wall isn’t the first archaeologist to be drawn to this rugged wedge of westernmost Maryland, pinched between Pennsylvania’s coal fields to the north and West Virginia’s snaggle-toothed ridges to the south and west. In the late 1800s, researchers from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.—150 miles downstream—discovered clay pots and human remains during periodic forays. Decades later, local collectors led other scientists to spots where the collectors had found elegant stone points. But there were still few serious archaeological studies of the region’s prehistory in 1980, when the Maryland Bureau of Mines hired Wall, who was completing his doctorate at the time, to orchestrate a major archaeological survey of areas that could be mined for coal. Over three years, he and his team documented hundreds of prehistoric sites. Not many, however, boasted the thick, loamy soils and sheer density of artifacts he encountered at Barton. “It was already a pretty well-known site, but I did a little bit of surface collecting just to try it out,” the tall, easy-going, 52-year-old archaeologist recalls as he makes his way across the weathered cornstalks that mark the site, a major chunk of which was recently protected by The Archaeological Conservancy. To the untrained eye, there isn’t much to see: the gently sloping terrace sits below a roadside motel, boxed in by a raised highway, railroad tracks, the river, and a small tributary. But the wry and irreverent Wall has a marvelous ability to highlight its hidden qualities.

One is a selling point you might hear from a realtor: “This is a really great location, especially if you are living

Archaeologist Bob Wall photographs a pit feature in the Keyser village as two members of his crew observe. Based on pottery found in the feature, Wall believes it dates to the 1300s.

off the land,” he says. The site sits at a geographical crossroads of sorts, Wall notes. To the west are the high, narrow ravines of the Allegheny Plateau, while the gentler, and warmer, mountains of Appalachia’s Ridge and Valley Province stretch out to the east. To the north and south are uplands rich in game and stone outcrops, and stream valleys that carve natural paths through the mountains. Then there are fish and shellfish in the Potomac, which roars out the mountains just upstream and then eases into the flatter valley, where it has built some of the broadest floodplain terraces in the area.

“No doubt the locale was a major attraction,” agrees archaeologist Joe Dent of American University in Washington, another of the few researchers actively studying Potomac prehistory. “The river has always been a meeting place, and an important corridor. You can follow it west [from the Chesapeake Bay] to within spitting distance of the Ohio River Valley.”

Just when ancient travelers arrived at this little Nirvana on the North Branch, however, isn’t clear. At the site, Wall points out an almost imperceptible hump where a collector years ago found a stone point that might answer the question. It was a finely-fluted point in the Clovis style that experts associate with the early Paleo-Indian inhabitants of North America. It’s one of the few Clovis artifacts ever found in western Maryland. As stone can’t be

A number of volunteers worked at the site this season. Volunteers have made a significant contribution to the work done at Barton over the years. radiocarbon-dated, and there was no item associated with the point that could be dated either, the point is an indication, rather than conclusive proof, that these early visitors may have used the Barton site some 12,000 years ago.

Inch by inch, sherd by sherd

It wasn’t until 1987, however, that Wall got a chance to explore the site in-depth. Working with volunteers from the regional chapter of the Archaeological Society of Maryland—and with the blessing of landowner John Barton—Wall dug several deep test pits. He liked what he saw. Intact floodplain sediments were stacked six feet or deeper in places, a rarity in the region. And the lowest layers appeared to be very old, meaning they might entomb evidence of early occupations.

Wall and his crew were further cheered by the discovery of a few stone spear points of a design dated to the late Archaic period, 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. But the work was mind-numbing. “It appeared to be a very light occupation, and you could go days putting hard balls of clay through the screens and not find any artifacts,” Wall says. “People were grumbling.” Still, Barton looked like a promising place to build a solid occupational chronology, since the age of buried artifacts could be cross-checked by radiocarbon-dating burned organic matter in the surrounding soil.

Over the last decade, Wall has managed to return to the site almost every year in pursuit of that goal. His teams, including some volunteers who have dedicated their vacations to his digs for more than a decade, have so far systematically excavated a tiny portion of the 30-acre site. Sometimes they excavate mere inches a day, carefully mapping evidence of hearths, structures, and the occasional human burial (they have found three, all respectfully left in place). Most of what they find is a few inches below the surface, but they sometimes excavate to a depth of three feet or more in search of evidence of the earliest inhabitants. And at the end of the dig, Wall loads any unearthed artifacts—from tiny potsherds to hefty stone tools—into his pickup for the three-hour drive back to Towson University near Baltimore, where he has a parttime appointment.

In his Towson lab, Wall and his helpers painstakingly sort these artifacts. Pottery, for instance, is grouped by design, decoration, and the technique used to harden the clay; some Barton cultures used stone grit, for instance, while others mixed in bits of limestone or shell. The researchers also weigh the ceramics, since sheer bulk can provide clues to the number of people living on a site, and even their gender (women probably made the pots).

Stone tools are also grouped by design or raw material, then put under a magnifying lens to look for clues to their

purpose. Tools with edge angles of 50 degrees or more, for example, are considered best for cutting hard materials such as bone, while those with sharper edges were probably used for softer materials, such as skin or sinew. Mapping the distribution of leftover stone chips, known as debitage, can also aid in efforts to pinpoint workshops. Once finished, Wall transfers the artifacts to the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory in St. Leonard.

An Emerging Picture

Such meticulous processing has enabled Wall and his collaborators to piece together at least a partial picture of the Barton site’s complex prehistory. In general, there are no big surprises: the site appears to have become home to bigger and more established settlements over time, as early hunter-gatherers moved down from the uplands and began to take up agriculture and trade. But there are some interesting twists and gaps in the story.

In the early Paleo-Indian period, for instance, there is so far little evidence of occupation beyond that lone Clovis point. Still, Wall holds out hope. An apparently ancient layer of soil nearly six feet down has yielded a “somewhat iffy” radiocarbon date of nearly 16,000 years old, he notes, so “there’s potential to find good evidence of early occupations.” But that radiocarbon date—drawn from soil samples— could be skewed by groundwater intrusions, and although the deep layer contained some intriguing stone chips, he hasn’t yet found any diagnostic artifacts. Evidence for periodic habitation during the Archaic period, 9,500 to 3,000 years ago, is much stronger. In the early 1990s, Wall’s crew found serrated and notched projectile points that match Early and Middle Archaic artifacts documented at other sites in the region. But many were plucked from the surface or the shallow plow zone, and were not in stratigraphic context. A few Late Archaic artifacts, however, were found in stratigraphic context.

The quantity of artifacts increases dramatically in shallower soils that date to the Woodland period, which stretched from 3,000 to about 350 years ago. Here, just a few inches below the surface, pottery first appears in large quantities. Indeed, Wall says Woodland pottery can be “monotonously” common on North Branch prehistoric sites. At Barton, it is easily picked out of the corn furrows. Excavators also find numerous Woodland stone points, tools, and slate gorgets—decorative items that apparently hung by two holes from a string. There are also the occasional bone tools.

Sometimes, telltale styling can enable an experienced eye to date an artifact to the Early, Middle, or Late Woodland periods, although Wall admits the distinctions are often fuzzy. Adena-style points found at Barton, for instance, are believed to have been made during Early Woodland period. Similarly, the site’s relatively heavylipped Vinette pottery—named after a site in New York State—is considered an Early Woodland vintage. Its makers used crushed rock to temper the clay, and “cordmarked” the vessels inside and out with a paddle wrapped with fibrous cord. In contrast, a common Late Woodland pottery style, dubbed Keyser after the Virginia farm where it was first described, is tempered with shell and has different cordmarks and “pie crust” lips.

Using such markers, Wall has discovered solid evi-

A student sketches artifacts found at the site. This is part of the process of recording them. All of the artifacts will also be photographed, but that usually won’t occur until they’re being analyzed in a laboratory.

Archaeologist Bob Wall has been investigating the Barton site for 10 years.

dence of Early and Late Woodland settlements at Barton. For some reason, however, Middle Woodland artifacts are in short supply. Filling that gap, Wall says, “would be a nice contribution.”

The Village People

That gap, however, is more than compensated for by the fascinating Late Woodland village that Wall’s team began excavating in the mid-1990s. By about A.D.1000, he says, there is “overwhelming” evidence that the Barton site supported a succession of small, loosely organized hamlets, inhabited by people known as the Mason Island culture. The telltale leavings of these Late Woodland inhabitants include limestone-tempered “Page” ceramics, bone tools, and some evidence of corn horticulture. Around 1400, however, the Mason Island hamlets gave way to something quite different: a nucleated village surrounded by a heavy log stockade, inhabited by people who made shell-tempered Keyser ceramics and other unique tools.

Wall had long suspected that the village—or at least some interesting feature—was there. Aerial photos showed a noticeable patch of dark soil, and the surface was littered with an unusually high concentration of Keyser sherds. Excavations confirmed his hunch, turning up hearths, patches of structural postholes, and a wealth of artifacts. Over several field seasons, the curved stockade came into focus, along with a trench that appeared to be filled with trash. Overall, the village appears to cover at least two acres. “It’s definitely one of our most interesting features,” he says.

The appearance of the Keyser village, however, raises a host of questions. Where did these people come from? Why did they build the stockade? And, ultimately, where did they go?

Dent, for one, speculates that the Keyserites drifted in from the north and west, perhaps filling a void created by infighting or disease among the Mason Island communities. But based on his study of pottery styles, Wall believes that they may have come from the south, from what is now West Virginia. And he suggests that the stockade probably was for defense against other expanding groups, although that is hard to prove short of “finding an arrowhead stuck into a log,” he says. The inhabitants might have also built the stockade to define their village or pen livestock, he notes.

It’s also not clear if the Keyser people were around to see the arrival of the first European explorers in the late 1500s. At Barton, there is plenty of evidence of that great cultural contact: just north of the Keyser village, excavations have turned up dozens of sparkling blue trade beads, metal animal cutouts, copper tubes, and other evidence of European commerce. But the contact site has also yielded the exquisitely incised pottery of the Susquehannock people, who moved south into the area in the mid-1500s. In a recent paper, Wall and Heather Lapham of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale wonder whether the Keyser community was subsumed by the Susquehannocks or another tribe. Or, perhaps, the Susquehannocks arrived to find the Keyser village already abandoned and barely visible beneath the creeping floodplain vegetation.

Students and trained volunteers record features uncovered in a test unit.

Either way, the Susquehannocks themselves were soon on the way out, eventually to be replaced by a wandering band of Shawnee that set up camp on the site and then abandoned it. Ultimately came the settlers and miners, the men who built the railroad and highway that now define the edges of the Barton site, and the farmers who periodically plow its surface.

Unfinished Business

This year, the team sifting the Barton site faced especially challenging conditions. After three years of drought, the rains returned in June with a vengeance, buckling tarps and turning excavations into soupy watering holes. Even on dry days Wall’s team had to abandon several pits they were excavating after finding that the water table lurked just inches below the surface.

Still, they made some progress, mapping new postholes, pits, and hearths. And as the rain turned a nearby parking lot into a lake, Wall methodically lays some of the week’s more dramatic finds out on a Formica tabletop in a local diner. Among the most memorable: a polished bone knife that looked to all the world like an ivory letter opener you’d buy as a fancy gift, and a slate pendant with beveled edges that would be at home in any jeweler’s window.

Wall clearly enjoys such objects. But he also has his eye on making less flashy but probably more important discoveries. Working with a paleobotanist, he’d like to sift ancient pollen grains from prehistoric soils in order to learn more about the plants that fed and surrounded Barton’s prehistoric residents. He might look again at the raw materials used to make stone tools, seeking new insights into trade patterns, cultural contacts, and industrial practices. Excavating more of the Keyser village might reveal clues to social structure—was there a wealthy chief with a big house, or a more egalitarian community?

“There are so many questions you could look at, and you could spend years on any one of them,” Wall says as he carefully packs up his Barton treasures. He then describes a planned fall campaign to excavate some new units.

Of course, there’s never enough funding to do everything. But that’s never stopped the self-employed Wall, says Dent. “There’s not a lot of money for studying prehistory along the Potomac,” he says. “But Bob’s in love with the region, so he just keeps at it. It’s back-breaking work—but he’s been pathfinding.”

DAVID MALAKOFF covers research discoveries and the politics of science for Science magazine.