Nantucket and Other Native Places: The Legacy of Elizabeth Alden Little

5 Pilgrim Subsistence: A Seventeenth-Century Profile from the John and Priscilla Alden House, Duxbury, Massachusetts

5 Pilgrim Subsistence A Seventeenth-Century Profile from the John and Priscilla Alden House, Duxbury, Massachusetts Tonya Baroody Largy and Mitchell T. Mulholland In the late 1960s, popular archaeologist Roland Wells Robbins excavated a seventeenth-century house site in Duxbury, Massachusetts, believed to have been built and occupied by seventeenth-century settlers John Alden and Priscilla Mullins. Elizabeth Alden Little traced her ancestry to this important English family, and the results of archaeological studies conducted at the Alden House were one of her many interests. This chapter describes the archaeological faunal materials (bone and shell) recovered from the site by Robbins and what variables had to be considered to interpret their meaning. Much of the bone assemblage came from the house foundation fill in which Native American and European American artifacts were mixed, presenting a challenge for interpretation. Background In the late 1960s, popular archaeologist Roland Wells Robbins, with a staff of volunteers, excavated a seventeenth-century house site in Duxbury, Massachusetts. The house is believed to have been built and occupied by seventeenth-century settlers John Alden and Priscilla Mullins. The site was reported in 1969 in a notably detailed booklet (Robbins 1969), but many of the artifacts and faunal and floral samples were only summarized in tables. Robbins’s notes, photographs, and other site records 103 104 Tonya Baroody Largy and Mitchell T. Mulholland are curated at the Henley Library, Thoreau Institute, in Lincoln, Massachusetts . The collection of artifacts from the site was curated briefly by the town of Duxbury but later was transferred to the Alden Kindred, where it was stored in the attic of the Alden House museum. The collection remained at the Alden House for several years. In 1996, the artifact assemblage was encountered in the attic of the Alden House by Mitchell Mulholland, in precarious curation conditions. A Public Service Endowment grant was awarded by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to stabilize and conduct a preliminary analysis of this early collection, a partial goal of which would provide information of use in local schools. Artifacts were identified by Claire Carlson of Historic Deerfield (most of the historic period artifacts), Richard Colton of the National Park Service, Springfield Armory (metal, weapons, and military items), Eric Johnson of the Massachusetts Historical Commission (Native American lithics), and Elizabeth Chilton of the University of Massachusetts Amherst (Native American ceramics). Largy’s analysis of the faunal remains resulted in the identification of a wide range of wild and domestic mammals and birds and several varieties of shellfish remains from the collection. An analysis of the assemblage has revealed insights into potential seventeenth-century English and Native foodways, while taking into consideration the processes that led to the accumulation and preservation of the remains. The current study also has provided information about the size of early domestic species during the seventeenth century and illustrates the research value in collections from the past. Roland Wells Robbins and the Early Alden House Site Roland Wells Robbins was a highly popular archaeologist and lecturer in the 1950s to 1970s. His archaeological excavations were reported in popular magazines, such as Life. Robbins, lacking scholarly credentials, was criticized by academic archaeologists for a heavy-handed approach to archaeological excavation. Indeed, Robbins’s work could be uneven. However, his work at the seventeenth-century Saugus Iron Works in the early 1950s was exemplary even by today’s standards. Robbins was employed by the First Iron Works Association (a historic preservation organization that originated in Saugus in 1943) to excavate the remains of a seventeenth-century ironworks on the Saugus River and to provide archaeological information to guide the accurate reconstruction of an ironworks for a historic museum. The excavations included the 105 Pilgrim Subsistence accurate vertical and horizontal recordation of artifacts and features. A writer of copious field notes, Robbins also took more than 2,000 photographs of every phase of the Saugus investigation, leaving an extremely useful record of the excavation. On the other hand, some of Robbins’s excavations, such as that conducted at Moore State Park in Paxton, Massachusetts, relied on destructive methods employing heavy equipment and reconstruction of historic features loosely based on archaeological findings. Robbins has since been recognized for his contributions to archaeology . Researching his career, archaeologist Donald Linebaugh sees Robbins as a pioneer in twentieth-century historical archaeology and an early practitioner in archaeological consulting as a business (Linebaugh...