Roads, Rails, and Trails - Secretary of the Commonwealth

Eventually nineteen different sites were excavated.
These sites combined contained a record of people’s daily lives
extending from 8,000 B.C. to 1500 A.D. More than 180,000
artifacts were excavated, recorded, analyzed, and curated for
future study. The archaeologists also identified hundreds of
archaeological features.
At a site named Canoe River West, located near the
Canoe River in Norton, the archaeologists uncovered three
large platforms made of rocks. The rocks had been reddened
and cracked by exposure to heat, and among the rocks the
archaeologists found many bits of charcoal. The archaeologists
concluded that the platforms had underlain fires for cooking,
smoking, and drying fish that had been caught in the river. But
the platforms were only part of the story. When the
archaeologists dug beneath the platforms they found many
filled-in storage pits that had been used to store the smoked and
dried fish.
Apparently, the Canoe River West site was a favorite
fishing spot that was returned to year after year for thousands
of years. In those days the Canoe River, like many other
Massachusetts rivers, would have been filled with fish every
spring as shad, salmon, and other kinds of fish swam upstream
to spawn in freshwater lakes and brooks. The Native American
people trapped the fish in weirs, caught them with nets or
spears, cooked some to eat right away, and smoked and dried
the rest for later. This was an important part of the settlement
system, a time of year when people could gather together in
large groups, with plenty of food at hand. They built the rock
platforms, or reused platforms from previous years, kindled
fires on them for smoking the fish, and dug pits in which they
stored the preserved fish (probably inside closely-woven
baskets). Some of the rock platforms were built right over
older, filled-in storage pits.
5
Rock Platform from the Canoe River West Site
Another site, named the Rozenas I site in Raynham,
also had evidence of repeated occupation over thousands of
years. At this site the archaeologists were able to distinguish
some distinct activity areas for living, manufacturing stone
tools, butchering animals, and preparing meals. Although the
site was occupied over thousands of years, much of the
occupation dated to around 1500 A.D., just before contact with
Europeans. The most ancient of the sites was the Double P site,
which contained artifacts and features that were more than
8,000 years old.