The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Fast tracking history
State won’t preserve ancient Indian fort found near harbor
NORWALK — A delicate, metallic scratching sound filled the air Thursday afternoon. Underneath a tent that did little to ward off the heat, archaeologists were busy uncovering history. They scraped away layers of dirt marked by stakes and tape measures and recorded their findings on clipboards and in plastic bags labeled “Norwalk Bridge.” Wooden sieves lay nearby to make sure even the smallest pieces of the past would be captured.
A $1 million archaeological excavation is underway in Norwalk, unearthing a centuries-old Native American fort filled with several thousand artifacts. The state Department of Transportation, which is in the midst of a billion-dollar replacement of the rail bridge over Norwalk Harbor, asked the exact location be withheld to discourage people from seeking out the site because even minute disturbances to the site could cause irreparable loss.
Officials said Thursday the site would not be preserved — all artifacts would be removed. It was a stark contrast to another major historical discovery made during construction of another state project, the dinosaur trackway in Rocky Hill that became Dinosaur State Park.
The field crew was from Archaeological and Historical Services, based out of Storrs, and they had first come to Norwalk in 2017 to evaluate the archaeological sensitivity of the Walk Bridge replacement project for the state Department of Transportation. The archaeologists bored down into the ground to remove layers of soil known as geoprobes, which can provide information on whether the ground from previous eras is intact.
Artifacts, including part of a stone tool, surfaced with the probes, a sign of the bounty preserved in the soil.
Senior Architect Ross Harper went through just a few of the artifacts already unearthed, items from both the New World and the Old. There were arrowheads chiseled from quartz and a musket ball smaller than a marble, proof of trade with the Dutch that had occurred at the site. There were the remnants of copper and brass kettles Native Americans had recycled into beads, projectiles and spoons and pottery fragments that may be keys to deciphering cultural ties between Norwalk Indians and other tribes.
“We have recovered more Native American pottery than in the past 30 years combined,” Harper said, referring to the pottery recovered in Connecticut by his company.
The oldest artifacts so far, archaeologist Sarah Sportman said, were estimated to be 4,000 to 5,000 years old.
But most of them are from the socalled contact period — the time when Europeans first interacted with Native Americans and about which relatively little is known — meaning the Norwalk excavation could yield rare insights.
“It’s a very rare site,” Harper said. “There’s maybe half a dozen throughout the entire Long Island Sound area, and a lot of those have actually been developed, and they no longer exist.”
Archaeologists believe the site will change our understanding of history on both a global and local level.
The artifacts give insight into the international trade going on at the time, as well as the daily habits of Norwalk Indians.
”When it comes to the early Norwalk Native American groups, we know hardly anything about them,” Harper said. “We don’t even know if they were more closely related to the Delaware of New York or more closely related to the Mohegans and Pequots. This area has been this giant blank spot of what we know about Native Americans at this time period. So every single thing that we find adds something new and important to the puzzle. And because of the preservation of this site and the extent that’s left, we’ll be able to reconstruct their lives in incredible detail.”
Artifacts found so far include remnants of the charred maize, berries and animals that were eaten there. And at the far end of the site, archaeologists Ben Kelsey of Branford and Dan Zoto of Massachusetts lifted up a tarp covering part of the ground.
David Westmoreland, chairman of the Norwalk Historical Commission, looked moved as he surveyed the site.
“I learned more in an hour yesterday than my total sum knowledge of our Indians, just being here and listening to these guys.”