The
first radiocarbon dates in the Northeast
for the Archaic Period were obtained from
Ellsworth Falls. Three dates were run
on charcoal samples and the results ranged
between 4,100 and 3,400 years ago. These
dates were much earlier than anyone had
previously expected.
At Ellsworth Falls archaeologists
identified and dated a sequence of layers
of cultural occupations extending from
colonial times back thousands of years.
Radiocarbon dating is
the single most useful method employed
by archaeologists to date sites or occupation
levels within sites.
Learn More
The
Ellsworth Falls project was the beginning
of a long collaboration between Wendell
Hadlock (left), of the Abbe Museum and Douglas
Byers (right), director of the Robert S.
Peabody Museum of Archaeology, Andover,
Massachusetts.
What
Did They Want to Know?
What
Did They They Find?
“How old are
the sites and what is the sequence
of cultures?”
By the 1940s, archaeologists were
interested in going beyond excavating
single sites to putting together
the chronology of cultures within
a geographic region.
Archaic
Period
Stratigraphy
Ceramic
Period
Historic
Period
What
Have We Learned?
Byers
and Hadlock identified four occupations
in the Ellsworth Falls sequence.
Byers named each occupation and
identified a characteristic assemblage
of tools and technologies.
Today, Byers's
named sequences from Ellsworth Falls
are not used, but his basic chronology
of changes in tool types is still
used as a framework for understanding
cultural chronology.
References: The Eastern Archaic: Some Problems
And Hypotheses. Douglas S.
Byers. American Antiquity
Vol. 24, No. 3, 1954.
The Contributions of Wendell
S. Hadlock to the Pre-European Archaeology
of Maine. David Sanger. Maine
Archaeological Society Bulletin,
Vol. 45, No. 2, 2005.
