The Work of the Cape Porpoise Archaeological Alliance
By Shelley Wigglesworth
Photos by Elizabeth Kelley
The Cape Porpoise Archaeological Alliance (CPAA) is a partnership organization of the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust and the Brick Store Museum. The CPAA was formed and founded in 2016 by Registered Professional Archaeologist Tim Spahr and Dr. Gemma Hudgell. Spahr is a resident of Kennebunk and former Maine State Game Warden who formerly starred in the popular television series North Woods Law on Animal Planet. Hudgell is a professional archaeologist, co-owner, and the principal investigator of Northeast Archaeological Resource Center. In addition to Spahr and Hudgell, the CPAA team includes Arthur Anderson PhD, Kate Pontbriand MS, Dawna Lamson BA, and Elizabeth Kelley MFA.
Spahr explained how the CPAA came to be and what has been accomplished in the six years since its founding. “After completing my master’s degree at Harvard in Museum Studies which included a practicum at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and an internship under Dr. Arthur Spiess at the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, we organized the program with the Brick Store Museum and the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust. For the past six years, we have been conducting grant funded archaeological test surveys and some excavations off the islands of Cape Porpoise. Our research has shown that peoples have visited Cape Porpoise for eight thousand years. Also, That Cape Porpoise was a place of early contact between Indigenous peoples and some of the first Europeans to arrive in Northern New England. There has been little archaeology done in southern Maine to document and archive this, which makes our work even more important; accruing data before it is lost to erosion.” To locate, analyze and document these sites before impacts of climate change and rising sea levels take their toll is important also of importance.
A very notable find was the remains of a dugout canoe which was partially revealed by shifting buried in tidal sands. A small sample of wood taken from the artifact gave a radiocarbon date of between 1275 and 1380 A.D. (about seven hundred years old), confirming its nature as a precontact vessel, and making it the oldest known dugout canoe in the northeast United States and Maritime Provinces.
Other artifacts such as stone tools from the Middle and Late Archaic periods (7,500 to 3,000 years ago), Woodland-Ceramic period (3,000 to 500 years ago) and clay pipe stems from the first Europeans that arrived in Northern New England in the late sixteenth century were also recovered. “This means that people have lived in Cape Porpoise for at least 7,500 years. The Precontact artifacts have been recovered from various places on the islands and indicate the locations of former campsites or stopping-off places; each of these areas has been designated an archaeological site by the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.” Spahr explained.
The stone tools and flakes were fashioned from several types of rocks from distant regions implying they came to Cape Porpoise through trade or travel. Spahr said “The range of styles of stone tools recovered tell us the age of the sites, as these styles changed through time in a manner well documented through the northeast. The varieties of stone materials also inform on site age, as certain materials appear in the archaeological record at known times in the past and reflect patterns of trade and travel at those instances.”
When archeologists conduct field surveys and excavations, exact locations of their work are recorded, and artifacts are documented. Spahr said precise areas are kept confidential to keep the ancient remains in an undisturbed state for careful and accurate data collection and to discourage looting of artifacts. “All of our archaeological research is confidential. It is important to note, we are not just looking for things, we are trying to learn about the people who used those things hundreds or thousands of years ago. Our methods as archaeologists as well as our mission as a team, comes from a place of respect for the original Wabanaki people of this land that is now called Maine. We stay in close contact with the Tribal Historic Preservation Officers and maintain good working relationships within the in the Wabanaki Federation.
Tools frequently used to recover artifacts are trowels, screens, compasses, and surveying devices called transits. Whenever possible, any finds artifacts that make sense to recover from a site are meticulously and safely transported to a laboratory. In the case of the CPAA, that laboratory is at the Brick Store Museum. Once at the lab, artifacts are washed, analyzed and information is documented through photography and drawing, and when applicable, cataloged. Reports of the findings are submitted to the Maine Historic Preservation Commission annually and information and exhibits on findings have been/or are on display at The Brick Store Museum.
In recent years, four professional papers on the findings of the CPAA team and extensive research efforts have been published. “Two papers were published in the Journal of Island and Coastal archaeology which is an international scientific journal, and three papers were published in the Maine Archaeological Bulletin in addition to annual survey reports to the Maine Historic Preservation Commission. Copies of the papers published in JICA, and the Maine Archaeological Bulletin are available upon request become and part of the archaeological record,” Spahr said.
When it comes to the future of CPAA, Spahr said, plans are to continue to conduct professional archaeology based in scientific principals and ethics while engaging interested citizen scientists, and to secure funding to allow for more research. “When it comes to advancing projects, funding is always an issue and can advance the work or lead to setbacks. All CPAA activity is funded by grants. My hope is to see an endowment established but it’s a difficult endeavor,” Spahr said.
For more information about the CPAA, please contact Spahr at: timspahr.cpaa@gmail.com or through the Brick Store Museum or Kennebunkport Conservation Trust. Donations to the CPAA can be made to the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust, PO Box 7004, Cape Porpoise, ME 04014. Be sure to make a notation on the check that the money is for the CPAA archaeology project.