By Kristen Tolles
Ms. Tolles was formerly a Laboratory Technician for the MPMRC Research Department

In October members of the archaeology staff of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center and State Archaeologist Dr. Nicholas Bellintoni teamed up with Dr. Robert Korwin, Margaret O’Keefe and other staff members from the Village for Families & Children in Hartford to give children who may never get a chance to experience archaeology, an opportunity to take part in an excavation. Twelve students ranging from ages six to 12 worked at three different recreated archaeological sites on the Village campus.

The groups started the morning intently listening to Dr. Bellintoni describe how the landscape they were standing on would have looked 10,000 years ago. He also talked about the Native groups that had lived near the school and aspects of their society. Then they began carefully excavating with trowels, screening soil, documenting finds and learning the methods of archaeology.

The students were divided into three groups. The first dug at a fabricated prehistoric base camp site. Real artifacts were provided by Dr. Bellantoni from the collections of the Office of the State Archaeologist and included: drills, grinding stones, arrowheads, soapstone vessel fragments and axes. A hearth area was uncovered that included charcoal, “burned animal bone” and shell fragments.

The second group dug at another “prehistoric site” designed to simulate a small hunting camp where stone tools were made and discarded. This site consisted of two concentrations of actual stone flaking debris and spear points made from a variety of stone materials common in the state.

A third group dug a modern site that was designed to represent a child’s birthday party. This assemblage included wrapping paper, party favors, candles, plastic tableware and other signifiers of a child’s birthday.  The site was created to help the children understand that the archaeological record is still being created and how artifacts provide different types of clues about past activities.

After lunch the groups had a chance to “show and tell” what they had found in the morning. They examined the stone tools they had discovered and compared them to equivalent modern tools to guess how they were used. Based on their site drawings and other documentation they were able to see how the various sites could have functioned. Despite a chilly morning, everyone had a great time, learned a lot and enjoyed being an archaeologist for a day.