The Fiske Center’s Dr. Heather Trigg explains some of the field and lab methods we’ve employed to better understand the 18th and 19th century Nipmuc landscape in Hassanamesit Woods:

“One of the goals of the Hassanamesit Woods Archaeological project is to better understand the landscape around the Sarah Boston and Deb Newman homesteads. Lots of data have already been collected about the location and extent of the walls surrounding the Sarah Boston site that tell about how the land was partitioned, and from written sources, Heather has gathered information about how some of the areas around the house were used. To these, we are adding two analyses that we hope will give us specific information about changes in the vegetation around the sites and help us identify specific activities such as where animals were pastured or the location of the barn (which documents say existed, but has yet to be found).

So, to try to understand changes in the vegetation and how the land was used, we collected two soil cores near the Deb Newman site. This involved pounding clear acrylic tubes, about 3 inches in diameter, into the sediment to a depth of about 3 feet, and then digging the tubes out again. Inside the tubes, we have a nice column of soil. The soil will be taken back to the UMass Boston labs, and over the next few months, we will extract and identify pollen contained in the sediments. From this, we hope to reconstruct the vegetation over at least the last 1000 years, and tie this into changes the landscape particularly during Sarah Boston’s and Deb Newman’s times.

To try to locate specific activities areas, we are taking soil samples to test for phosphates. Since certain things, especially the presence of livestock, increase phosphate levels in the soil, we are systematically taking small cores all around the Sarah Boston house and transects in places documents identify as the pasture and a plant gathering area. These soil samples, like the pollen cores, will be taken back to the UMass Boston labs and analyzed for phosphate levels. Hopefully this will help us locate the barn and confirm the location of the pasture.”