Free for All: The Vermont Archaeological Society and the Journal of Vermont Archaeology

The Vermont Archaeological Society is celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, and they have not only made  pdfs of their journal free to download, they have also made membership in the Society free.

The Journal of Vermont Archaeology has been published since 1994. In it, you can read about the squabble over who discovered Vermont’s first Paleoindian site.

Victor Rolando’s monograph 200 Years of Soot and Sweat: The History and Archeology of Vermont’s Iron, Charcoal, and Lime Industries, originally published in 1992,  is also available for download at their site.

Who Really Discovered the First Paleoindian Sites in Vermont?

In 1927, the Folsom site in New Mexico, which contained the distinctive fluted stone points of the same name directly associated with an extinct species of bison, was identified by archaeologists as the first Paleoindian site. In conjunction with the similar, but earlier, Clovis fluted points found at Blackwater Draw a few years later, these two sites provided clear evidence that humans had been present in the United States since the end of the Pleistocene.

As these discoveries became publicized and archaeologists looked for more examples of early sites, it soon became apparent that fluted points had been found in many states by amateur antiquarians, often as surface finds. Without good contextual data, however, no one had realized how old these points actually were.

In 1929, Vermont collector Benjamin Fisher read an article about the Folsom site in the New York Herald Tribune. He immediately wrote a letter to the scientist mentioned in the paper, Barnum Brown, at the American Museum of Natural History:

Small Towns/Small Cities

Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Source: by Seabear70 [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], from Wikimedia CommonsO
Our Towns: A 100,000 Mile Journey into the Heart of America is James Fallows and Deborah Fallows take on American towns that are surviving or thriving.

From Curbed:

The focus on dense, walkable, multimodal urbanism, regardless of the size of the city or town, was a common feature of areas the Fallows felt were bouncing back. Many cities are taking advantage of their 19th-century building stock, investing in historic preservation and adaptive reuse. They’re also adding art and music spaces, showcasing how small-town urbanism is alive and well.