Curry called the decoration unique. He said the fancy pot, along with an intact paint pot and the wealth of other rare tools and artifacts, and their abundance at the site, suggest that Pig Point might have been a distribution point for trade among far-flung Indian groups.
"There's something going on at this site that's a little more than a little habitation site," he said. "I've not had a site pique my interest this quickly in quite a while."
The county's archaeologists were alerted to the Pig Point site last year while Luckenbach and his crews were digging on the site of a 17th-century house at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater. A contractor doing unrelated work on the property showed an interest in the archaeology and mentioned that he had found Indian artifacts for years on his property at Bristol Landing.
The contractor, who asked not to be named or quoted directly, said he'd found many arrowheads and much broken pottery. He knew it should be excavated by professionals and finally persuaded Luckenbach to take a look.
After initial shovel tests last year, Luckenbach returned with his crew and student interns in April, and they've been digging there weekly ever since.
The dig is co-funded by the Anne Arundel Trust for Preservation and the Maryland Historical Trust.
Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold said Luckenbach and his staff "are to be commended for the enthusiasm they bring to their job ... and the educational opportunities they provide for young people."
Leopold, who recalled finding arrowheads and Indian pottery in New Mexico as a teenager, visited Pig Point recently for a closer look.
"I just find it exciting to find tangible evidence of former cultures and learn how they lived, and to learn from those cultures," he said.
So far, the dig has focused on two areas of the front yard of a rental home on the property. As they stripped away the topsoil at the first location, the team of diggers began to notice a line of "post molds," dark stains in the subsoil where wooden posts had been inserted and later decayed. The stains soon began to trace out an oval, 20 feet long by 15 feet wide.
The Algonquians, Luckenbach said, built their dwellings by cutting saplings, jamming them into the ground in an oval pattern, and then bending the tops together to form the skeleton of a lodge. They would be strapped together and covered with matting to keep out the weather, making a home for 10 to 12 people.
