An archeological dig by the Stockbridge-Munsee tribe, Williams College, and the City of Stockbridge beside Ice Glen was looking for and found evidence of colonial era habitation by Native Americans a few feet underground.

After 4 days of digging exploratory holes and sifting through mud and sand little was unearthed. Until the 5th day, when they found a living floor with a charcoal hearth, signifying a house.   And there were layers of charcoal separated by flood deposits, signifying that the Mohicans returned to the exact same spot year after year.

The strange thing is when looking at magnetic imaging of the area it is one black disturbance in a line of about 6 black disturbances.

This had the archeologists scratching their heads most of the morning because it would be strange for houses to be lined up so close together and in a straight line. Over lunch, they consulted with a geomorphologist who suggested it could have been a line of hearths in a longhouse used for meetings.

The dark dirt on the bottom and the wall of the hole are evidence of a hearth, and the light dirt is a compacted living floor.

After finding the first evidence of a hearth the team opened another hole above one of the other magnetic imaging disturbances.

All afternoon they found charcoal, knapped stones, a used cobble stone, and burnt bone.  All signs of Mohican settlement, but they didn’t find a second hearth.  By 4pm a heavy storm started to come in and they had to cover the holes.  The next day would be their last, and was scheduled only as a cleanup day.

Proving or disproving the longhouse theory will require another dig.

But the bigger story is how the Stockbridge-Munsee tribe will continue working with Williams college to identify and repatriate artifacts, and bodies of their ancestors.  They are also working with the city of Stockbridge to identify and document their historic homes.