After a “ridiculously successful” session in the North Country, a decades-long program in which amateurs help dig into New Hampshire’s pre-colonial past is returning to Bear Brook State Park.

The program, State Conservation and Rescue Archaeology Program or SCRAP, has been led by the state and academic partners for more than 40 years, exposing hundreds of people to the dusty pleasures of archaeological field work all over the state, while gathering data about life in New Hampshire before Europeans arrived. Summer field schools offer academic credit as well as experience in digs for around 20 people, lasting a couple of weeks.

Last year the summer program came to Bear Brook at a location that hasn’t been revealed, so that curiosity-seekers won’t ruin it. State Archaeologist Mark Doperalski led the work, which covered about 30 square meters on a bluff overlooking a river.

“We found a nice concentration of tool-making debris and hearth features, two right next to each other, dated approx. 2,000 years ago. We’re waiting for residue analysis for more details,” said Doperalski.

This year they will be moving upstream to a new site, where there are indications of prehistoric use, continuing efforts to understand Native American land use throughout the state.

“We want to see what’s there, see how they relate to each other,” he said. The Bear Brook summer program, which is already filled, will run through the middle of July. The program costs $50, or more if you want academic credit.

Doperalski led a similar excavation in June at Mollidgewock State Park in Errol, north of Berlin, which he said exceeded his hopes and was “ridiculously successful.”

“We had two hearths and now have three hearth features up there,” dated to approximately 3,000 to 3,400 years ago, he said.

The group “focused on a stone tool workshop area, about three meters by three meters. It was a really intensive workshop area where stone tools were made. We found between 5,000 to 6,0000 lithic artifacts, including debris, stone-tool fragments, cores.”

People have inhabited what is now New Hampshire since shortly after the glaciers receded some 14,000 years ago. Signs of seasonal camps dating back millennia have been found along waterways throughout the state. Most objects made at these sites are long gone, from woven baskets to cordage made of plants to the wooden shafts of tools or weapons, leaving only stone tools and related material, and signs of controlled burns such as stones that ringed a hearth fire.

For more information about SCRAP, see the website at nh.gov/nhdhr/SCRAP.htm.

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