Venerable, retired, Connecticut Valley archaeologist Peter Thomas has chimed in on a perplexing regional Atlantic salmon puzzle that keeps on giving and won’t go away.

The question is: Given that we know spring salmon-spawning runs once populated New England rivers, and that salmon was a valued food resource for indigenous and colonial inhabitants alike, why is there virtually no archaeological evidence?

Thomas, responding by email to my last Montague Reporter column (January 23), doesn’t think it’s rocket science. But first, a little refresher on previous discussion in this space.

Even though salmon evidence is rare in New England’s archaeological record, we can recite a long list of regional salmon falls and rivers – including some right here in the Connecticut Valley – which strongly suggest salmon presence. Yet still, no archaeological remains, according to UMass anthropologist Catherine Carroll Carlson, who reviewed reports of 75 known fishing sites for her 1992 UMass doctoral dissertation, The Atlantic Salmon in New England History and Prehistory: Social and Environmental Implications.

Carlson’s findings were not welcomed by altruistic fisheries biologists working furiously at the time to restore Connecticut River salmon. Instead, her conclusions were greeted by catcalls, boos, and hisses, and publicly dismissed as invalid by critics with jobs and blind crusades to protect.

Loud and clear, these critics could hear the death knell sounding on their struggling federal and state Connecticut River Atlantic Salmon Restoration Program, which was finally abandoned in 2013 following a failed 46-year effort.

My most recent foray into this issue wondered aloud why a certain ubiquitous Connecticut River conservation gadfly was so threatened by new research aimed at tweaking Carlson’s conclusion that, because New England salmon remains are almost non-existent in the archaeological record, so, too, were salmon.

She even went so far as to opine that New England salmon populations were intentionally overstated by colonial promoters attempting to entice restless European emigrants to a new and faraway land of unimaginable abundance. So deceptive were these promoters that they named the previously unknown American shad “white salmon” as a disingenuous drawing card. Those smaller, plebian shad, she said, were the staple of New England’s annual anadromous fish runs; not Atlantic salmon – king of North Atlantic gamefish and table fare of royalty.

She was right. Shad runs did indeed dwarf accompanying salmon runs here. But when you toss in peripheral perspective from personal accounts like The Diary of Matthew Patten of Bedford, New Hampshire, 1754-1788, it’s quite apparent that salmon were not, as Carlson claims, “insignificant,” but a valuable food-resource worth targeting for the larder.

So, why are their remains so scarce in New England’s archaeological record?

Thomas – with digs at Riverside/Gill and the Sokoki Fort in Vernon, Vermont to his credit – says there are two good reasons, both relating to “a lack of evidence of specific activities surviving in the ground for archaeologists to excavate and interpret.”

During his two “very limited” Riverside excavations adjacent to the well-know fishing falls on the Connecticut, Thomas encountered three to four feet of black, organically-rich soils containing high levels of mercury and iodine derived from marine fish species.

“Based on the numerous stone tools we found,” he wrote, “Native occupants had fished at the falls for some 9,000 years each spring.”

Yet, while no one has ever challenged the fact that massive runs of shad and alewives (and lesser numbers of salmon) ran the river each year, there’s a lack of identifiable remains. The reason, according to Thomas, is that “no unburned bone of any animal – fish, mammal, reptile or bird – has survived in these acidic soils. Tiny fragments of heavily burned fish bone are present, but species identification is not possible, with one exception. Two small, football-shaped bones, called prootic bulla, are found in the head of each shad, of which 72 were recovered. In short, lack of identifiable salmon bones does not mean they were not caught and eaten along with other species.”

Archaeologists rely on the stone tools they recover to identify or surmise site activities. Thomas says literally thousands of stone points have been recovered over the years around Riverside, confirming that occupants were heavily engaged in hunting.

“However, with the exception of stone net sinkers,” he says, “all fishing gear consisted of bone, antler, wood or plant fibers – none of which survived in the ground. This absence has also led to a gross underestimation of the significance of Native fishing.”

In recent months, Thomas and fellow retired archaeologist Stuart Fiedel have combed through many additional riverside site reports. They have found that these reports are consistent in revealing an abundance of stone hunting tools but few fishing tools, except for the aforementioned net sinkers.

So, chalk up these recent Thomas/Fiedel findings as food for an addendum to Carlson’s dated dissertation – likely with more to come.

Stay tuned.

Wedged inconspicuously into a slim, dim, and dusty space between a wall-length book cabinet and the northeast corner in my study hangs a framed, matted, five-by-seven-inch pen-and-ink sketch of a younger me signed by late Manchester Union Leader illustrator John Noga.

Despite ultraviolet-protective glass, the paper has taken on a warm sepia tone that speaks to its age. It was drawn more than 40 years ago for the “sig” accompanying my monthly Connecticut Valley column in Massachusetts/New Hampshire Out of Doors. Owned and operated by publisher/editor Bryant “Red” Chaplin, the popular regional publication was known to readers as MOOD.

I was pushing 30 at the time of the sketch. I wore a full head of curly hair and a trim beard and mustache, with a glint of the devil in my eye.

When I catch a glimpse on my daily rounds, it often evokes memories dating back to my early freelance-writing days, when I dared to question the viability of our ambitious state and federal Connecticut River Atlantic salmon-restoration program, ultimately derailed 13 years ago due to poor results.

Back in the 1980s I was the only mainstream media voice – or New England Outdoor Writers Association (NEOWA) member – openly questioning a salmon comeback. I presume older members preferred to believe misleading press releases and promotional words of wisdom from hopeful fish and wildlife agencies and salmon organizations. Veteran outdoor scribes in the cocktail lounge might’ve admitted it was pie in the sky, but figured why not be supportive and give it a chance?

Chaplin and I forged a great working relationship during the 10 or 11 years we shared before his 1992 cancer death at 65. We often chatted on the phone and always took full advantage of our social interactions at the annual three-day NEOWA meeting and banquet at the Sheraton-Boxborough. Born with deep Yankee roots in 1926, he was two years older than my father.

One time during a typically spirited phone call, I worked up the nerve to ask Red what he did with his columnist sketches. When he generously offered to send me mine if I wanted it, my answer was yes, sure, if he didn’t mind. He promptly made a copy for his files and dropped the carefully packaged original in the mail.

It is the best gift I ever received as a journalist, working long, erratic and thankless hours for meager pay.

I immediately took my treasure a mile down the road to Andy’s Frame Shop, across the road from the South Deerfield cemetery where my ashes and those of my wife and sons will eventually lie in the Sanderson plot of my grandfather, his parents and two sisters.

A glance at my youthful portrait stirs memories from the late 1980s, when Chaplin defended me in a dispute precipitated by a fellow MOOD columnist. My foe, a police captain from Northampton and a loyal Atlantic Salmon Federation member, was longer-tenured than me and fed up with my salmon-restoration skepticism. When he threatened to resign if I wasn’t canned, or at the very least silenced, Red assured him he’d hate to lose his taxidermy column yet would not satisfy his demand. He was in the business of selling papers, he informed him, not refereeing political dustups between his freelancer staff.

Which brings us to the present day, and a January 9 Reporter op-ed in which ubiquitous Connecticut River activist-gadfly Karl Meyer took exception to my continuously evolving opinions about the status of our prehistoric salmon runs. He is apparently unaware of new research by two retired, respected archaeologists with impressive chops who are studying old records to reassess and further clarify our prehistoric New England salmon runs.

The impetus was their doubts about the accuracy of former UMass anthropologist Catherine Carroll Carlson’s 40-year-old characterization of ancient New England salmon runs as “insignificant.” This conclusion became the unchallenged backbone of her 1992 doctoral dissertation, The Atlantic Salmon in New England History and Prehistory: Social and Environmental Implications, which sounded our salmon-restoration death knell. Her assessment was based primarily on the rarity of salmon evidence in the archaeological record she reviewed in reports from 75 known prehistoric Northeastern fishing sites.

The question now entertaining erudite Ph.D.s Peter Thomas and Stuart Fiedel is: why so few New England salmon remains, and quantifiable reports? We know from credible colonials that salmon were not only here but plentiful enough to be viewed as a valuable food resource to transplanted Europeans and indigenous natives alike. So, why the scarcity of archaeological evidence? They speculate there’s a good reason that we’re all missing.

Who can blame them for their dogged determination to answer this vexing mystery?

Let us not forget that Carlson’s thesis, and other academic reports like it, are never to be viewed as the final word, but rather as a starting point for future discovery. She was at the time a young doctoral student trying to earn an advanced degree, not a venerable archaeologist with mountains of experience behind her. On the other hand, Thomas and Fiedel are grizzled veterans at the twilight of their careers. They’re not trying to invalidate or undermine her work, just fine-tune accuracy.

Look at it this way: Carlson planted the flag, they’re advancing it. Why is that so threatening to Meyer and his self-professed “Connecticut River hero, who grew up in the Great Northwest of legendary salmon runs she knew well?” Is it possible that comparisons could have clouded her perspective with preconceived, provincial opinions? Maybe. No shame in that.

The last time I looked at the Thomas/Fiedel work in progress, it was surprised to discover it had grown to more than 200 pages. I knew it underway because I am always poking around for new information, and have contributed occasional insight. No doubt, Carlson was on the right track when her findings were radioactive to tunnel-visioned Connecticut River salmon-restoration officials and the “high-cotton” choir singing praise of their altruistic program. But they need to be tweaked.

Although I can’t prove it without exerting more effort than it’s worth – and doubt Meyer would ever admit it – I’m quite confident he learned of Carlson’s bombshell scholarship from my old Greenfield Recorder column, “On The Trail.” At least I know that’s how we first met, when he reached out to me by email. That would have been around 1988, long before he embarked on his busy freelance-writing tour about 25 years ago. By that time salmon restoration was on its last leg, and I had moved onto other topics.

Don’t forget, the 1980s and early ’90s were the glory days – if there was such a thing – of the failed Connecticut River salmon-restoration effort. Critical voices were then rare indeed – and frowned upon by the many true-believers offering blind support. A record 529 salmon were counted migrating upriver during the 1981 spawning run. Then came the second-best run of 490 11 years later, in 1992, the year Carlson’s Molotov cocktail hit the street.

Other than those two record runs, success was thin, with one string of three consecutive counts of 300 or better between 1985 and 1987. There were only two others, for a total of seven over a 46-year experiment ending in 2013. The total salmon count during that entire 46-year effort was 6,098, a number that wouldn’t have been sufficient annually to justify ending their endangered status and opening a sport-fishing season.

Truth be told, our Connecticut River restoration program never had a chance. But it wasn’t because salmon weren’t here to greet European explorers. Greatly complicating matters were factors like industrial dams and pollution, climate change, regional water temperatures, and gluttonous colonial overharvest that stacked the deck against sustainability. Many biologists knew this, but were reluctant to say it out loud. I believe one of them was Meyer’s trusted source and friend Boyd Kynard – a top-shelf fisheries biologists and, incidentally, one of three advisors who approved Carlson’s dissertation.

As far as I can tell, Kynard was never a loud, confrontational critic. Just a calm, diplomatic voice of reason who didn’t hesitate to warn his scientific brethren that Connecticut River salmon restoration might not work.

Why Meyer insists on accepting Carlson’s findings as the final word on regional salmon research is beyond my comprehension. The program’s demise is old news. That horse left the barn long ago. Why not explore something new?

Wouldn’t it be interesting to figure out why – even though salmon absolutely did seasonally populate many New England rivers – their remains are virtually nonexistent in the archaeological record?

Wouldn’t Mr. Meyer be better served by focusing on his loud shortnosed-sturgeon crusade and leaving ample space for new scholarship aimed at solving a confusing salmon mystery?