Headquarters Site,
Missisquoi River, Swanton Vermont

 

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Iraqoui Corn



Middle Archaic Point


Artifact Found at Site



Artifacts Found at Site



Projectile Points

The Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) is sponsoring exciting new archaeological research along the Missisquoi River in Swanton, Vermont.  The University of Maine at Farmington Archaeology Research Center (UMF ARC) is conducting the research as an integral part of a much-needed VTrans project to widen and improve Vermont Route 78, which unavoidably will affect two important archaeological sites.  VTrans and the UMF ARC are working together to carefully balance the need to preserve and learn about the rich Native American and Historic Euroamerican history of the area with the need to maintain and improve Vermont’s roadways.

Research this year is at the Headquarters site, a very significant site that extends for over a mile along the bank of the Missisquoi River.  Work at the site continues to provide important evidence of Native American life in Vermont and the northeast of North America.  This evidence includes a variety of artifacts and other remains including stone tools and the chips or waste from making them, animal and plant remains indicating what people were eating and the variety of rich resources being available in the local area.  UMF is also finding fire hearths, refuse pits and food storage pits, all of which provide important clues about the past.  Importantly these remains are preserved and ‘stratified’ within river flood plain deposits.  As people lived at the site over time, flood deposits capped over the remains they left behind, so the different times periods are separated in a layer cake like effect. This separation of cultural remains (artifacts and features) offers a unique research opportunity.

So far we have evidence that people lived at the site as early as 5500-3000 B.C. during what archaeologists call the Archaic period.  Habitation included small groups of people camping along the river.  This continued until the subsequent Woodland period, which began about 1000 B.C., the hallmark of which is the use of pottery.  A pattern of increasing sedentism and incorporation of farming continued through the Woodland period and the Contact period (ca. A.D. 1550-1750) when Europeans first came to the area.  The Abenaki continue to live in the Swanton area today.

Article by: 
Bob Bartone, University of Maine, Farmington

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Do you have any questions or comments about this site?  Please e-mail Jen Russell at jeannine.russell@state.vt.us