At the Site of the First Thanksgiving
Four hundred years after the first Thanksgiving鈥攁 three-day harvest feast celebrated in 1621 by a band of desperately struggling English settlers and a group of neighboring native Wampanoag鈥� it remains shrouded in many mysteries. Where exactly did the feast take place? What were relations between the colonists and native inhabitants like? Now, as the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving draws near, UMass Boston researchers are starting to provide answers.
UMass Boston Archaeologists Find the Pilgrims鈥� Original Compound and Offer New Insights into Relations Between English Settlers and Wampanoag.
In 2013, David Landon, associate director of UMass Boston鈥檚 Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research, launched an archaeological investigation into those questions with the cooperation of the Town of Plymouth and Plimoth Plantation, a living museum recreating life in the 17th-century settlement. He began with a search for evidence of the palisade that surrounded the original settlement where the first Thanksgiving probably took place. No one knew exactly where it had been built.
鈥淗istorical accounts of Plymouth put the top of Burial Hill as the location of the first fort and meeting house,鈥� Landon said. 鈥淭here are no maps from the time period, and the first map that puts any of the features of the original settlement on the ground isn鈥檛 until the 1870s. But there is an 1870s map that marks a location on Burial Hill. It says, 鈥榮ite of the first fort and meeting house.鈥欌��
Graduate students from UMass Boston and around the country have been participating in an archaeological dig in search of the original settlement every summer for five weeks for the past seven years. The dig focused in two areas on Burial Hill separated by an 1830s burial vault. One of the goals of the project was to locate evidence of the fortification in time for the 400th anniversary of the city of Plymouth in fall 2020. The fast-approaching deadline helps explain why graduate student Linda Seminario G鈥�23 remembers exactly where she was last year on the day that students in UMass Boston鈥檚 Archaeological Field School found evidence of the original palisade wall built to protect the Plimoth settlement.
鈥淚 was digging in the cellar [of a 17th-century house], which is about as deep as I am tall,鈥� recalled Seminario. 鈥淢y friend whispers to me, 鈥業 think we found the palisade.鈥欌��
The Edge Piece
Elizabeth Tarulis G鈥�20, a master鈥檚 student at the time of the discovery, said finding evidence of constructed features that have disappeared over time is different from finding tangible artifacts.
鈥淏ecause soil is deposited in layers, when anything goes through those layers it鈥檚 going to disturb them, and it鈥檚 going to leave distinctive shapes that we can interpret,鈥� Tarulis explained. 鈥淭rees, when they go through the soil, they leave behind root stains. If you put in a fence post, that leaves behind what鈥檚 called a post hole.鈥�
It was the discovery of a series of post-hole stains in the soil that led student researchers to definitively conclude that they had found the location of the palisade wall in 2019.
鈥淭hey noticed there were these darker spots that seemed to make a line, and they called Dave and [project archaeologist] Christa [Beranek] over,鈥� Seminario remembered.
鈥淲e are the first ones to actually have found any intact sections of the settlement,鈥� Landon said. 鈥淲hat I鈥檝e said to people is since we鈥檙e digging in downtown, we鈥檙e never going to find the whole outline of the settlement. We鈥檙e just going to get little jigsaw puzzle pieces of it. With the palisade, I like to say we鈥檝e only got a jigsaw puzzle piece, but we鈥檝e got an edge piece.鈥�
A New View of Relations Between Colonists and Natives
If the discovery of a fragment of the palisade wall helps locate the original settlement more precisely, and thus the general area where the first harvest celebration took place, other discoveries made by Landon鈥檚 team help characterize the relationship between settlers and natives.
How extensive were the encounters between the English and the Wampanoag during the earliest years of the settlement? The UMass Boston team thinks that perhaps they were more extensive than previously thought. They鈥檝e made that assessment based on the European pottery and Wampanoag pottery found in trash pits and the yard outside the 17th-century house.
鈥淲e kind of looked closely at that association, and it really seems like the European and Native pottery were being used side by side in some of the English houses in the original settlement,鈥� Landon said. 鈥淭he artifacts of that are not super exciting to look at because we鈥檙e looking at all these tiny little broken pieces of pottery. But then we go through the process of looking at the spatial patterning and the way they occur together in specific deposits, and it gives us some interesting information about close trade relationships between the Wampanoag and the colonists.鈥�
鈥淚 think a lot of visitors coming to our museum have this idea that the Pilgrims came to an uninhabited wilderness and every so often different indigenous characters would wander through,鈥� Jade Luiz, the curator of collections at Plimoth Plantation, said. 鈥淏ut in fact, what the archaeology is demonstrating is this constant communication and exchange of material goods and probably interpersonal interactions that are happening.鈥�
Luiz says UMass Boston鈥檚 findings have informed a new exhibit installed at the beginning of the 2020 season and that visitors to Plimoth Plantation will notice the addition of Wampanoag earthenware cooking pots, called pipkins, in English hearths.
Adds Sarah Rose, the deputy director for museum education and outreach at Plimoth Plantation, 鈥淚t鈥檚 just so fun when the archaeology backs up what we think we know from English accounts, and then to get the Native archaeology on top of that, the part of the story we don鈥檛 have a written record for, that gets super exciting for me, a non-archaeologist .鈥�
As Seminario put it, 鈥淚t really shifts the idea of what this moment in history looked like.鈥�
Constance the Calf
In 2014, when UMass Boston researchers began to find 17thcentury artifacts such as pottery, tins, trade beads, and musket balls, they were cautiously optimistic that they had found a location inside the walls of the first Plimoth settlement. But they weren鈥檛 sure until 2016 when they uncovered the skeleton of a calf, which students affectionately named Constance.
鈥淏ecause native people didn鈥檛 have domestic cattle,鈥� said David Landon, associate director of UMass Boston鈥檚 Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research, 鈥渨e know that Constance lived鈥攁nd died鈥攊n the confines of the original Plymouth settlement.鈥�
鈥淲hen we first uncovered the calf skeleton, we puzzled over the cause of death,鈥� Landon continued. 鈥淭ypically, when animals are eaten, the skeleton is cut up into smaller portions during butchery. In this case, we had lots of articulated parts of a single animal, showing that it was buried partially intact. When we brought all of the bones back to the lab, Anna Opishinski, one of the graduate research assistants, did a detailed 鈥榝orensic鈥� analysis of the bone surfaces, looking for evidence of disease, injury, or something else that would hint at the cause of death. In this case, Anna found very small cut marks across many surfaces of the bone, showing that the animal was in fact butchered and eaten.鈥�