Roads, Rails, and Trails - Secretary of the Commonwealth

Food remains from the site included bones of mammals
(muskrat, deer, bear, beaver, and skunk), reptiles (snake and
turtle), birds and fish, shells of freshwater mussels, and charred
pieces of hickory nut shell. These reflected the wide range of
environments accessible from the site: forested hills, wooded
swamps, open rivers, ponds, and marshes, where people could
hunt, fish, and gather.
Even though it was small, the Hartford Avenue
rockshelter was a place where people stayed at least now and
then for many thousands of years. There were artifacts from the
site’s deepest deposits that were as much as 7,000 years old.
One feature inside the shelter (Feature 6) was much more
recent than that; it was radiocarbon dated to sometime in the
13 th Century AD. This feature was particularly well preserved
because part of it was protected from recent disturbance by a
large boulder that had fallen from the rock face and covered it.
Beneath this stone were preserved nearly one hundred small
pottery fragments (called sherds), which may have all been
from a single vessel, as well as bone fragments from deer,
skunk, muskrat, turtle, and grouse.
A small firepit on the slope just outside the shelter
(Feature 8) was radiocarbon dated to the 1600s. It too,
contained many sherds of pottery, but not much else in the way
of artifacts. Because it was so small and contained little
evidence of sustained use such as burned soils, a substantial
lining of rocks, or large quantities of artifacts or burned bone,
the archaeologists concluded that it represented a very brief
stay, perhaps a single night of a journey, during which a
cooking pot broke and was left behind.
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This plan of Feature 6 shows that a large rock covered and
helped preserve part of the feature.
The cross section or profile drawing of Feature 8 shows that
it was a shallow firepit with a concentration of pottery sherds
in its upper portion.