Riverbank secrets shared with public

NORWALK — After five years of excavation along the west branch of the Huron River, the Sandusky Bay Chapter of the Archaeological Society of Ohio has donated several boxes of artifacts to the Firelands Historical Society Museum, a gift representing two millennia of early life in North Central Ohio. "This particular site that we are donating material from, we dug there for five years," Glen Boatman, a representative of the archaeological society, said. "We worked with the University of Toledo and Firelands Archaeology, which is another local group." The Sandusky Bay Chapter of the archaeological society has been active in the region for decades, focusing on research rather than profit, according to Boatman. The donation includes boxes filled with triangular arrowheads, scrapers, hammer stones and ceramics. Many of the ceramic fragments have been preserved for future testing, according to Boatman. "In case we want to run some dates later after we reassess everything that's been assessed once, the material will go to the museum," he said. Among the most striking discoveries from the donated collection are fragments of a ceramic strainer that contained gravel and a small fish bone — an ancient tool used for food preparation. "It had pea gravel in it and a fish bone in it," Boatman said. "We know that it was being utilized for scooping up a stew or whatever; that is one of the best things we found." The site, located on a natural peninsula overlooking the river about 15 miles south of Norwalk, yielded evidence of two major occupations, one around 950 BC to 100 BC, and another between 200 AD and 130 AD. According to Boatman, the society uses clues to tell what the previous inhabitants of the spot built there. "We can tell that there might be a structure or something on this site," he said. "We try to give some perspective to what was going on in this area." While the exact cultural identity of the people who lived there remains unknown, the artifacts trace a long migration history. "People that were here in the time period that we normally run into vacated this area and moved to the Wisconsin area," he said. "We can tell that by the pottery change." The group's members are largely volunteers, some of whom have been trained under professional archaeologists, according to Boatman. "All of us are amateurs but trained well," he said. "By working with professionals, we've learned skills that are equivalent to what they do basically." The society now hopes the museum's stewardship will ensure the preservation and accessibility of their work, in addition to a 200-page annual report from the society detailing their digs and finds. "What good is it to go dig the stuff up if you don't actually write up something that people can read?" he said. "We write up a report on it, and we publish in our journal every year."