Exeter News-Letter News: Getting elbows deep into... -
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Published on: 8/31/2002
Last Visited: 8/31/2002
"You never know what you are going to find," said Neill DePaoli, the project archaeologist.
The idea of the project is to get an overall footprint of what once was Thomas Wiggin Jr.'s house, and gain a view into the history of the homestead.
The Wiggin archaeological dig site is one of five current projects in the Seacoast.The archaeologists at the Wiggin site are in the final, intensive excavation stage of the project, after digging for more than four weeks, and having spent time working near the site in 1992, 1994 and 2000.
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"We've found much of the building but we haven't closed the door yet," said DePaoli .
In the past month, the archaeologists have defined the boundaries of the cellar walls and established that the building went far beyond the cellar.
The actual occupation dates were also confirmed.The home may date back to as early as the mid-1600s, raising the possibility that the senior Wiggin, not his son, may have built the homestead.
"This is the earliest excavated English homestead in New Hampshire," Dr. DePaoli said."The site itself is definitely significant enough to warrant funding to be looked at again."
He said if he comes back to the site in the near future, the archaeologists would like to decipher the overall makeup and layout of the farmstead.
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DePaoli said the archaeologists began to realize there was something significant on the site, but were reluctant to keep digging because there was no history specialist on-site.
The time period was pinpointed to the late 1600s and early 1700s, but the cellar walls were then still undefined.
Six years later, money was needed to conduct more research at the site.The archaeologists secured a $9,000 grant through the Sargent Museum from the state planning office.
In 2000, archaeologists revisited the site intending to do a follow-up from work done in '92 and '94.