By Frank D. Roylance , frank.roylance@baltsun.com|July 02, 2009
Anne Arundel County archaeologists have uncovered an Algonquian Indian camp on a bluff above a lush bend in the Patuxent River, a find that includes the oldest human structure ever detected in Maryland.
Artifacts show that the campsite - in a location favored by native people for hundreds of years for its bounty of fish, shellfish and game - was in use two centuries and more before Christopher Columbus set sail from Europe.
The dig has uncovered traces of oval Algonquian wigwams; rare tools of stone, bone and antler; fragments of a highly decorated pot; an intact paint pot; and a broken gorget, a dark stone polished and drilled for use as personal decoration.
"It is clearly the most important prehistoric site in the county, and if it keeps going like this we'll be in the running for the most important prehistoric site in the state," said county archaeologist Al Luckenbach.
Carbon 14 dating on charcoal from a hearth found outside the outline of the wigwam suggests that the site was occupied between 1290 and 1300, making it the oldest dwelling ever discovered in the state, Luckenbach said. Outlines of other dwellings at the site might be older.
Dennis Curry, an archaeologist with the Maryland Historical Trust, calls the Pig Point site "spectacular."
"Finding what certainly look like house patterns up there is astonishing," he said.
Unusual sandy soil at Pig Point has preserved tools that usually would be lost after centuries in the ground, including an arrowhead carved from deer antler, deer-bone needles and awls. There are plant remains, including carbonized nuts and seeds that provide a rare look at the broad spectrum of the Native American diet of the period.
Luckenbach was enthusiastic about the elaborate geometric designs found on fragments of a football-size ceramic pot he's been reassembling.
Prehistoric sites in Maryland more typically turn up pottery shards with simple decoration, much of it made by pressing twisted cords into the soft clay.
With this pot, though, the archaeologists sense that they have turned up the 700-year-old work of an artist. The complex pattern of triangles and intersecting lines pressed into the clay while it was soft extend from the pot's rim to its base.
"This is beyond decoration; this is art," Luckenbach said. "Nobody's seen anything like it. All of us were blown away. ... The pottery gives us a rare glimpse of what they were capable of."
