The Mashantucket Pequot Archaeological Excavations at Lake of Isles, North Stonington

Brian D. Jones
Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center

For two years Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center (MPMRC) staff archaeologists, interns and field school participants have been excavating at the Lake of Isles. Over 800 acres of the old Boy Scout camp are now in the process of being remodeled into two world-class, eighteen-hole golf courses. This construction project has provided an opportunity to carefully examine 21 archaeological sites that range in date from as much as 9,000 years ago to the early 20th century. A lucky "warm spell" (a few degrees above freezing) provided the opportunity to continue digging through early January. Now that the sites have been excavated, the challenging process of artifact inventory and analysis has begun in earnest.

A total of over 900 square meters of soil was hand-excavated to a depth of one to two feet at the 21 sites. The amount of data recovered from the excavations is staggering. More than 95,000 historic artifacts (fragments of glass, ceramics, brick, metal, etc.) and more than 24,000 prehistoric artifacts (primarily stone chipping debris, over 100 spear points, and a small amount of pottery) have been inventoried to date, in addition to some 16,000 animal and 6,000 plant remains. When this arduous task is finished, it will be possible to map the distribution of all these artifacts to within 50 cm. of their original find spots. At that time, the spatial relationships between artifacts will become evident and will allow the interpretation of otherwise unrecorded human activities that occurred long ago.

Importantly, initial analysis of the Lake of Isles sites has already resulted in four studies. Architectural historian Myron Stachiw incorporated Lake of Isles finds into a study analyzing non-Native architecture from the 17th through early 19th centuries and the MPMRC's Head Curator Stephen Cook examined differences between 18th century site assemblages from Lake of Isles and Mashantucket. Both of these papers were presented at the Third Mashantucket Pequot History Conference held at the MPMRC last September. Jennifer Trunzo, a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University, and Jason Mancini, Senior Researcher, MPMRC, discussed 18th through 19th century racial diversity at the Lake of Isles sites at the meetings of the Society for Historical Archaeology held this January in Providence. Jennifer is planning to focus her dissertation research on the historic community of the Lake of Isles area. Finally, undergraduate Elizabeth Lees (Central Connecticut State University) just completed a senior thesis examining differences between Middle Archaic (ca. 8,000-6,000 years old) and Late Archaic (ca. 6,000-4,000 years old) sites at Lake of Isles. She focused on issues of site duration and function which might clarify changes in settlement organization which occurred at this time.

These exciting sites will continue to provide valuable information regarding the prehistoric and historic life-ways of the people of southeastern Connecticut long after golfers become more common than archaeologists at Lake of Isles. Some sites are bound to remain mysterious for quite some time. One excavated this past December remains particularly intriguing. Only after removing hundreds of pounds of fallen rock from the base of a small cliff did a clear historic chimney base appear. It became evident that the mid-18th century occupants of this site had actually built a small house up against the cliff face. To our knowledge, nothing like this has been recorded in this region. If it were not for the diligence and hard work of the excavation team (in particular Staff Archaeologist Julie Brodeur), this interesting site would surely have been overlooked. This is just one of many examples of curious and otherwise interesting sites examined over the last two years at Lake of Isles. It will likely take years of additional research to tie such enigmatic historic sites to specific names and dates. Similarly, the in-depth analysis of the many prehistoric sites is likely to keep staff and numerous students occupied for the foreseeable future.