Abbe Museum
Search the Abbe Museum Website:
Layers of Time

Explore these Sites
Taft Point 1936-37
Ellsworth Falls 1946-55
Ruth Moore 1991-94
Seboomook 2004
 
 
TAFT POINT 1936-1937
The Site /Project

Taft Point is one of only a handful of coastal sites with a record of human occupation extending back several thousand years, a time period referred to as the Archaic. Archaic Period sites date to 3,000 years ago or older.

Wendell Hadlock excavated Taft Point under controlled excavation conditions. A table in the site report illustrates the pattern of artifact distribution.
View the table

Archaeologists uncovered a pilot whale skull during the 1937 excavation at Taft Point.
Learn more

 
What Did They Want to Know?
What Did They They Find?
"How old were the lowest levels of Taft Point and did they represent a culture different from the upper level?"

Hadlock observed that the upper levels of the site contained pottery, while the lower levels were pottery-free. He also saw differences in the kinds of tools represented in each zone.
Ceramic Period Artifacts
Archaic Period Artifacts
What Have We Learned?

The lowest level of Taft Point did represent an older, distinctly different culture from the upper levels.

The earliest level at Taft Point produced an assemblage of tools including plummets, ground stone tools, slate points, hammerstones and stemmed projectile points. This tool kit grouping is associated with the Late Archaic Period by archaeologists and dates to between 5,000 and 3,000 years ago.

We have also learned that the pottery-bearing levels of Taft Point date to the Ceramic Period. Dating to the most recent 3,000 years of the archaeological record, the Ceramic Period tool kit includes clay pottery, small notched projectile points and bone tools.

The site was mapped with a grid system and profiles of the stratigraphy pictured here, that enabled Hadlock to pinpoint the exact location of artifacts horizontally and vertically.    
Reference: The Taft's Point Shell Mound at West Gouldsboro, Maine. Wendell S. Hadlock. Robert Abbe Museum, Bar Harbor, ME, 1939.
 
ABBE MUSEUM
PO Box 286
Bar Harbor, Maine 04609
Support for the development of this website is provided by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
207/288.3519
Fax 207/288.8979
E-mail the Abbe
Reproduction of material without written permission is prohibited.