http://www.archaeologynews.org/story.asp?ID=149550&Title=Dig this dude
From : Dig this dude
Just don’t mention Indiana Jones or Lara Crofts
By John "jaQ" Andrews
jandrews@hippopress.com
When a Manchester Daily Express reporter called up state archaeologist Richard Boisvert for his comments on people digging up historical artifacts from the banks of the Merrimack River, he was surprised to learn of it. He immediately advised against it, not only because Manchester’s history is being disturbed, but because they’re digging on private and state property in violation of the law. Boisvert spoke to the Hippo about his job and archaeology in the state.
Q:Are the Merrimack’s banks particularly sensitive or historically significant?
There’s important stuff there that ought to be preserved, or at least studied in a good way ... I’m a state archaeologist, not a state policeman. I really don’t want to go running around seeing that people are arrested. I’d just as soon they not destroy the sites to begin with.
What does a state archaeologist do?
I review archaeological reports. I organize archaeological field schools, direct them. I provide oversight guidance to our archaeological site files and maps and so forth. I work with public education programs like Project Archaeology. I advise a lot of people on how to get archaeology done, but it’s a lot of, for lack of a better phrase, environmental impact work ... Once you destroy the site, it’s gone, so you want to make sure you do your investigations properly. So we give that kind of guidance. I do research ... I work with members of the public who are interested in archeology and I show them how we do it, what to do and so forth, and get them engaged in for-real archaeology, not just relic hunting.
Do you do on-site digging or planning? What kind of stuff have you gone out and done recently?
Most recently we were up in Randolph, N.H., working on a paleoindian site about 11,000 years old, excavating up there and trying to understand what people were doing at this spot 11,000 years ago. We have quite a wide variety of artifacts: spear points, knives, scrapers, chisels, woodworking tools, potworking tools; an extremely wide variety of tools more or less in one place. Two different hotspots might be 20 meters apart. It’s an unusual site in an unusual place. We’re trying to understand why it’s there as well as what were they doing there and so forth. Basically trying to reconstruct human behavior, which is a pretty tricky proposition. We have a hard time reconstructing it today when we can talk to people. “Why did you run that red light?” “I dunno...”
Is there a community of archaeologists out there in New Hampshire? Are they all doing it just for themselves?
There’s a professional community, and these are archaeologists who do work on contract before highways are built or cell towers, whatever. There’s two companies that are based in New Hampshire and there’s a bunch of others nearby. New England’s a small place.
For the cell towers and highways, are they mainly digging to make sure there’s nothing of significance?
The way that works is, the federal agencies involved need to ensure they’re not going to adversely affect significant historical resources ... The archaeologists go out, see if there’s something that’s going to be in the path of this cell tower, the dam, the highway, the sewage treatment plant, whatever, and there may be nothing there. If there is something there, the next question is, is it something that we really have to worry about? There’s a lot of sites out there that are there, but they’re compromised, they’ve been disturbed and they don’t really hold the potential to tell us something that we don’t already know, which is the cheap and dirty way of defining “significance.” If it is an important site, then what are you going to do? ... Total avoidance or total sacrifice are rarely real events.
Have there been any particularly significant finds in New Hampshire this year?
We worked on another one of these very old sites, about 11,000 years old, in Colebrook, N.H., and we found a place where people camped out and were making a specific kind of tool. It’s the signature artifact of this time period. They’re very rare, they’re unique in the way that they’re made and how they look ... These points have these grooves that run up the middle. The only time people did that was more than 10,000 years ago. We found a lot of evidence for the very specific manufacture of just that kind of spear point. Quite a pile of them. The site is in a unique environmental setting. It has an abundance of a very specific kind of data, and it has other very rare things, like evidence for a specific stakes or posts that are put in the ground for a structure or a drying rack or something.
Was it significant just because of the variety of different kinds of things there?
Actually, the lack of variety. It’s like, what a narrow spectrum, a very specialized site. it had just that evidence for making these spear points and nothing else. The one in Randolph had a wide variety of tools, it was a full-service site, it had everything there. The one in Colebrook, very narrow spectrum.
What do you think that means?
It tells us about how they were traveling across the countryside, because the raw material that they left behind was really unusual, and it’s specific to the making of the spear points. We have a lot of evidence on how the spear points were made, which is something that some of us get really interested in.
— John "jaQ" Andrews
be careful 
