Does anyone else have problems getting their head around small encampments of Paleo-Indian hunters spearing to death migrating caribou funneled through a tight ravine at the base of Sugarloaf some 12,350 years ago? Yes, mind boggling indeed, yet quite real.

I suppose what makes it all so unfathomable is the sad fact that the typical American citizen taught in the average American school is lost in a very intentional Christian/cultural fog that deceives most into believing that New England history began with the Plymouth pilgrims in 1620. If creative, curious and sophisticated, you may even want to begin with Leif Erikson and long-lost Vinland, circa 1000 AD, still to this day being hunted by scholarly explorers. Well, let me tell you a little secret: It all started way before the Vikings, secretive Basque fishermen or a Portuguese explorer named Christopher Columbus, and it was happening right here where we live, dating back between 12,000 and 13,000 years, maybe even a bit earlier. That was proven this week by radiocarbon dating performed on calcine (baked) bone fragments collected on a two-week archaeological excavation led from Sept. 7-21 by veteran, soon-to-be 67-year-old archaeologist Dr. Richard Michael Gramly, a Harvard Ph.D specializing in Paleo discovery, with the ground-breaking Vail Site in western Maine’s Rangeley Lakes Region and many other important sites to his credit.

Not one to putter around procrastinating over scholarly reports while storing artifacts in dark, locked vaults secreted far from public view, Gramly has, since returning home on Sept. 21, been furiously piecing together the clues uncovered with shovel, trowel and soft-bristled brush by his veteran, highly coordinated American Society for Amateur Archaeologists crew. After packaging and mailing his bone samples to Beta Analytic, a respected Miami, Fla., lab he and other top archaeologists have for 30 years used to date material, Gramly has continued to diligently pick away at the artifacts, attempting to reassemble broken pieces and comprehend precisely what it all means. Beta lab has already examined the bone and dated it to 10,350 years Before Present, plus or minus 50, which, according to Gramly, computes out to approximately 12,350 actual calendar years or to roughly the date 10,337 BC … mind-blowing indeed. That’s nearly 10,000 years before ancient Greece and Rome, more than 9,000 years before ancient Egyptian civilization coalesced.

Wow!

Truth be told, Gramly was a little disappointed with the date because what he had seen led him to speculate the artifacts gathered at the site dated back as far as the Vail Site he dug in 1980. Beta Analytic and another independent lab dated the bone collected there at about 350 years older, some 12,700 years old. But hey, a layman might ask, what’s 350 years in a picture so deep? And although that sounds like a reasonable assessment, Gramly says one should be careful not to dismiss 3½ centuries so haphazardly, saying 350 years is not in any way insignificant in the big picture. Much can change in three centuries, including such crucial factors as climate,  glacier-melt and vegetation to name a few, and Gramly insists that archaeologists must pay close attention to the minutest details when interpreting prehistoric data. So, for the time being, he’s going to treat the Vail and Sugarloaf sites as apples and oranges, comparing the South Deerfield site bordering a sandy, agricultural Whately plain as a “sister site” to the famed Bull Brook Site of Paleo legend in Ipswich.

“That site sits 120 miles due east of the Sugarloaf Site,” said Gramly, reached at his North Andover home Tuesday. “We don’t know if we’re dealing with the same bands of hunters at the sites, or related bands, or if it was the same people migrating with the caribou herds from one site to the other. We may never know, but I’d sure like to know.”

Gramly’s most recent dig was his second at the Sugarloaf Site. Following his first dig — performed in 1995 on private abutting property that has since been purchased by the state and kept off-limits — Gramly wrote a book and gave all his field notes kept in India Ink along with reports and photos to Memorial Libraries in Deerfield. Not only that but he gave all artifacts to the rightful owners, the Whately family that owned the land before selling it under pressure from the state. That family has shown the artifacts to many, including New York scientists who are now trying to date them using new, state-of-the-art technology. But now Gramly has beat them to it, finally getting a definitive date after nearly 40 years of bureaucratic thumb-twiddling fueled by professional/academic competition and jealously.

Gramly’s top priority was to date the Sugarloaf Site, and that has now been done thanks to the many bone fragments he was able to collect. Actually, he could have sacrificed the only bone fragment he found on his last dig 18 years ago but refused because it was the only piece of bone he found and he didn’t want to destroy it. In the near future, he’ll also be submitting an exciting collection of charcoal discovered in more than one two-square-meter pits, including one uncovered toward the end of the second week that what was believed to be a bowl-shaped fire pit. However, Gramly warned, “Charcoal dating is a little more risky. Sometimes a tree can burn right down to the roots, leaving charcoal. That’s why I wanted bones to date. Bone dating can’t be denied.”

In the meantime, Gramly is working furiously to put together a PowerPoint summary of the Sugarloaf dig he plans to unveil a few weeks down the road in Portland, Maine, where the prestigious Eastern States Archaeological Federation is meeting the weekend of Nov. 1. There, with rumors likely already swirling through scholarly Northeastern archaeological circles, Gramly will likely blow the cover off the Franklin County site, which he implores has sat idle long enough and should be explored further in search of habitation and kill sites there. If he can supply the wind behind the sails, that Sugarloaf Site could open the gates to long overdue exploration of other important Pioneer Valley prehistoric sites, places like Canada Hill overlooking once-sacred Peskeomskut waterfall in Turners Falls, the Bashin in North Hatfield, Kells Farm in Greenfield, sites in Northfield and Hadley and Sunderland and on and on and on.

“I don’t know what they’ve been waiting for,” said Gramly. “I’m a scientist and the inactivity makes absolutely no sense to me. How can they continue to ignore it? Here we have one of the most important Paleo sites in North America, one we’ve known about for more than 40 years, and they’ve been just sitting on it all this time. By now, in my opinion, there should have been 40 or 50 doctoral dissertations to come out of that site and related sites right there in your home, the Connecticut Valley, an archaeological treasure trove that needs to be explored.”

Asked if it’s likely there are earlier sites in the neighborhood, Gramly didn’t hesitate to answer in the affirmative.

“Yes, it’s very likely there’s just such a site not far away,” he said. “Bud Driver has a drill point of an earlier style that showed up prominently at the Vail Site, and it came from within a mile or two of Sugarloaf. I intend to investigate that site and talk to the farmer.”

So, stay tuned: The days of public railing against this stuff as hysterical anti-development rhetoric and historical hooey may be over if Gramly has anything to say about it. My guess is that a new clamor is building intense pressure and ready to blow. New spokespeople driving the message will be unimpeachable experts in their field, and the old boys trying to discredit and demean them will look foolish indeed, if not intentionally manipulative and, in the end, uninformed at best.

As for the staid academic cultural-resource managers committed to silence in the name of protection and preservation, well, we’ll see how it all turns out for them. They may yet figure out how to have it both ways.

“Can you imagine the state buying that first site I dug to prevent further study?” asked Gramly. “They paid almost half a million dollars for it. Just think what we could have done with a half-million to dig it.”

Something smells fishy.

I’ve found that most things happen for a reason. Take, for instance, Wednesday morning’s incoming mail.

Having heard the white USPS jeep pass a half-hour earlier while reading, I pulled my truck up alongside the mailbox to retrieve the mail on my way out of the yard to run the dogs. The first item to catch my eye was a flier from Cobb’s auction in Peterborough, N.H., the cover displaying the glossy color photo of a formal Chippendale chest of drawers similar in style to a friend’s recent purchase. The next item to pull me in was a pale, robin’s-egg-blue, greeting-card-sized envelope addressed to me below a paste-on return address from Kirk Spurr, the dean of diggers assisting Dr. Richard Michael Gramly on a recent archaeological excavation along the perimeter of an important Paleo-Indian site situated on a sandy terrace below Mt. Sugarloaf. Inside was a personal note and a compact-disk archive of photographs taken by Spurr, 83, and other participants during the important two-week dig performed by members of Gramly’s American Society for Amateur Archaeology on what is likely the hottest Paleo site this side of the Mississippi River, definitely sacred ground in the archaeological world.

Before I proceed, I suppose I should take a moment to explain to those who spend their free time perched in treestands with bow and arrows how a man penning an outdoors column can get drawn into writing about archaeological excavations. Well, all I can say is that hunting and fishing and the outdoors are still important to me, but not nearly as fascinating as 12,000-year-old Paleo hunters spearing caribou and wooly mammoths on my childhood haunts with stone, bi-faced weapons sharpened in an open-air workshop being uncovered before my eyes on Sugarloaf’s lap. Can it get any more interesting than that? Not in this man’s world.

But, back to Spurr — a man I observed performing various excavation chores, usually wearing a distinctive, tinted-billed straw hat, not to mention a palpable gleam of boyish enthusiasm — my indelible image of him was planted in my mind on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, Sept. 25, as the archaeological crew buttoned down its sophisticated, fine-tuned project for the night. My wife had spelled me in my son’s Springfield hospital room and told me in passing that a friend had left a phone message to say he was traveling to the site to meet an important Paleo scholar expected to arrive from France that afternoon. Good timing, I thought, having already intended to stop on my may through and see what was happening. Upon my arrival, I noticed local dig-liaison and Deerfield Historical Commission member David “Bud” Driver standing and talking to a thin, distinguished, bespectacled, gray-bearded man between the gabled ends of two barns stuffed with aromatic field tobacco. Driver signaled me over with his hand and introduced me to Duncan Caldwell, who I discovered was the very man my telephone pal thought I should know en route. Fact was, he was not coming in from France, though, but a place much closer, Martha’s Vineyard, his summer place of residence. What does it matter? He winters in France. Anyway, I spoke for some time with Caldwell, a fascinating man and skilled conversationalist who was most interested in historical context of the site I know as Hopewell, the plain and swamp below, which I was more than willing to provide. Our rambling, dynamic conversation lasted perhaps 20 minutes, stopping just in time to wander toward the picnic table where the work crew drifted at the end of each day for casual conversation and laughter.

On our short walk to the table, capped with a cooler-ful of soft drinks, a few colorful pumpkins and items of discarded clothing here and there, Caldwell recognized Spurr standing near a wooden-framed, wire-screen sifter resting on sawhorses along the edge of a two-meter-square hole and greeted him with a warm hello and smile. He immediately walked over to him, shook hands and wrapped both arms around him in a brotherly embrace that told me Spurr — a retired Ph.D chemist with a Dartmouth and Cornell academic pedigree — was not anyone you’d call an amateur. Caldwell, a world-renowned expert in Paleo-Indians, was obviously greeting him as a peer and colleague, someone he had worked with many times before and for whom he held his deepest respect.

“They call us amateurs because we don’t get paid for this work,” Spurr explained in his quiet, humble, Ivy League way, “but we have more field experience than most working professional digs, which are usually manned by young college students.”

Another big difference I have sensed between professional and amateur archaeologists from personal observation is hesitance on the part of the former go public with site locations and reports. Not so with Gramly, who I watched drop whatever he was doing several times to walk a new arrival around the site explaining everything, and then some. A true educator with youthful exuberance and energy, Gramly never showed a trace of impatience or a hint that he was being inconvenienced. On the other hand, local academics have been digging locally for decades and largely keeping their reports and artifacts hidden from public view in the name of site preservation and protection. Not only that, but these folks, the haughty professionals, pejoratively refer to Gramly’s crews as “amateur,” even though a cursory review of their crews’ credentials would reveal an entirely different story. No one can call Gramly an amateur, he who holds the same Harvard degrees as his most outspoken critics, not to mention decades more experience. And the same can be said for most of the men and women who follow him from site to site as a faithful, competent crew.

“I was happy to hear Mike was leading this dig because I know he’ll publish something quickly that people can get their hands on,” said perhaps the world’s preeminent Northeastern lithics expert the first time we met on-site. And although this source didn’t go into detail and throw anyone under the bus, I knew the target was the secrecy and perhaps hidden agendas of state officials and some local academics who carry their water at digs conducted under state permit.

Although I won’t go overboard criticizing the state archaeologist and her UMass minions who deny they are secretive, then refuse access to their reports and artifacts, I know of two local landowners who permitted important archaeological excavations on their land over the past 20 years and have yet to see an accounting of the artifacts dug or the reports written. One of these landowners even sent a written request for a report and had received back not even the courtesy of a response at press time. Yet defenders of state policy claim that all reports are maintained by the Massachusetts Historical Commission and can be requested by interested parties. Of course, that doesn’t mean such a request will be approved. In fact, I’d say it’s unlikely that John Q. Public Citizen, or a newspaper for that matter, would have much success obtaining such reports. If you doubt it, give it a shot and see where it leads.

Gramly, a sophisticated scientist at the top of his game, is likely now in marathon analysis of the many artifacts collected over 14 days in Deerfield, and I know from speaking to him on-site that he is in awe of what was gathered and will publish in a timely fashion a comprehensive summary of his findings, something average readers will be able to purchase and understand. It is also likely that many others who participated in the dig will write their own accounts describing what it means in an assortment of magazines aimed at scholarly and average readers.

It’ll be interesting to see where this all goes and what the “official reaction” is. My suspicion is that the wheels are already spinning, someone’s unhappy with Gramly, and something is about to break. But my guess is that officials who make and enforce the rules will be very careful. Remember, given a choice, they’d rather sweep this stuff under the carpet than stir up a dust storm in the press, especially when the facts could turn public perception in the wrong direction.

Tiny red rose hips are aflame and alluring as cornfields brown and swamps glow their familiar purple/yellow hue with the autumnal equinox and Harvest Moon behind us, the waning half-moon reduced to a faint, ghostly mid-morning spy in the clear blue western sky.

You may have noticed my absence the past two weeks. I was away tending to a life-threatening family emergency, yet another surgical intervention, one that nearly took someone dear. But he’s out of the hospital recovering, so here I sit, back in familiar surroundings, thinking about bears and deer, a book, and an important local Paleolithic site that was recently and quietly explored by an eclectic group of “amateur” archaeologists. The veteran researchers hoped to and succeeded in flying under the radar to avoid potential interference or obstruction, uncovering many extraordinary artifacts along the way in square, layered holes dug by hand with shovel and trowel on a sandy Sugarloaf skirt. But let’s start with an appetizer on bears to get it quickly behind us, then move to a brief deer observation before rolling up our sleeves, tucking our napkins behind our collars and diving into the meat and potatoes.

Mid-afternoon Saturday, seeking distraction from my son’s serious situation, I was reading in the bright sunny parlor off the carriage sheds, sun backlighting the pages through the large plate-glass door, when silence was interrupted by what sounded like a hunter firing five shots in a familiar cadence that immediately captivated me.

“Pow-pow-pow!” The first report sounded.

Then, a few seconds later, another echoing “Pow!” followed by a few minutes of hollow silence and a final “Pow!” likely the coup de grace. This barrage emanated from the wooded ridge west and south of me, cornfields below, orchards above, hickory groves in between. Is there a more likely spot for a bear to die on the final day of the three-week September hunting season? If all goes as expected, by the time the second segment of the split six-week season ends in mid-November, we may see as many as 160 kills, less than half the annual harvest officials deem necessary to stabilize a burgeoning Bay State bear population that could become problematic if it isn’t already.

I suppose I could ask a middle man’s permission to phone checking stations and compile a preliminary harvest like I always did years back, before all the stifling new rules and regs and state protocols. But, no, must be I’m getting stubborn in old age, have given up on weak-kneed kowtows so am now reduced to the pitiful state of waiting for press releases like the rest of the struggling print media. It’s not my preferred news-gathering method. No, it’s the state’s way, and I guess I must live with it as I fade toward what I pray will be a productive and creative retirement, maybe even one laced with genuine passion. I guess officials figure it’s safer to control all outgoing “news” nowadays, which, of course, becomes history by the time newspapers get it. Come to think of it, I haven’t even seen the spring turkey-harvest figures yet. Go figure. The season ended in May. Maybe the Westborough office’s calculator is busted. And they call this progress? Not me. I call it boooooooring and unacceptable, can’t flee fast enough from “news” like that.

Truth be told, I used to enjoy chasing down preliminary bear harvests with former professorial state Bear Project Leader Jim Cardoza, now retired. In fact, I looked forward to it. But there must have been someone who didn’t appreciate me consistently beating him to the umbers (hint-hint, one of few Pioneer Valley outdoor scribes with a longer reign than me). So now we have rules to assure “fairness,” that is a routine that provides all media with the same press releases at the same hour, guaranteeing that radio and TV breaks the “news” before newspapers. What gives? Are there not rewards for diligent pursuit by determined scribes who’ve built their sources’ trust? No sir, not today, even in a politically correct, dog-eat-dog, violent capitalistic society. Hey, isn’t that oxymoronic? Or am I straight-up crazy?

As for deer, well, what I have to say is hardly worth a new paragraph in these days of tight news holes — just that it amazes me how the deer I’ve been monitoring all year seem to bed down in shin-high hayfields nightly, probably out of sight to all but the keenest outlaws shining fields with headlights at night. I pass their matted beds daily on my morning walks with the dogs, most often two but sometimes as many as five right in the middle of dense red-clover patches. So put that in you pipe and smoke it, fellas, and file it for future reference. When the pressure’s on, deer will hide in swamps and fields where they were born. Bank it!

But enough trivial stuff … on to recent reading, a paperback review copy of soon-to-be-released “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants” — an important collection of essays by a wise wilderness voice named Robin Wall Kimmerer, a professor and member of the Potawatomi Nation who lives outside of Syracuse, NY, where she teaches at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. All I can say is it’s a blessing for those who murdered and drove her people from their homeland and stole their land that Indians like her had no written language way back when, because had they been able to articulate their message like Kimmerer, they would have gained many allies and been much tougher for utilitarian Christian mercenaries to defeat for the public good; oh yes, always for the public good, it defined by government greed and injustice. These deceptive leaders anointed by election create frightful demons, brainwash the uninformed and dazed to a state of intense fear and hatred, then send them off as twisted soldiers to dispose of fictitious devils.

I discovered Kimmerer in Orion magazine, a literary publication headquartered in Great Barrington, printed in Dalton and dedicated to nature/culture/place — my kinda reading. I found her holistic world view refreshing in the article, Council of the Pecans, then in “Braiding Sweetgrass” skipped over it and another essay I had previously read online about the human defilement of Syracuse’s Onondaga Lake. I would recommend Kimmerer’s new book to anyone, even political enemies who may yet see the ray of light shining in from a sacred faraway place where plants and animals, wind and water and the landscape are viewed a brothers and sisters, not servile beasts to be raped and pillaged for profit. Kimmerer fears it may already be too late. So do I. But it’s never too late to read the likes of her when searching for new wisdom and alternative thinking. What a sweet breath of fresh air she is. “Braiding Sweetgrass” is a great coffee-table book, one you shouldn’t blow through quickly. No, you’ll get much more out of it by just reading a chapter here and there and probing the depths of each dynamic message.

So now let me close with a few observations about that archaeological dig I observed intermittently between trips to the hospital in Springfield the past two weeks. The site is located close to Interstate 91 between home and hospital, and it just so happened to be on land deeply stained with my DNA and quite familiar for many other reasons. Led by Dr. Richard Michael Gramly — a respected, published Harvard PhD and American Society for Amateur Archaeology founder — his sophisticated work crew included a star-studded cast of experienced excavators, all of them present on their own dime, donating their time and paying out of pocket for lodging. Also randomly visiting the site on various days were many world-renowned experts in the field of Paleo archaeology, all of them passing through to observe the dig and add perspective. Among the diggers toiling for 14 days in the hot sun were respected authors, college professors, museum curators, magazine editor/publishers, and learned archaeological “hobbyists,” some retired for years and carrying PhD’s in other fields, not to mention brains bulging with valuable archaeological-excavation experience.

Why were these folks there, straddling the Whately/Deerfield line between barns filled with drying field tobacco and a long tall mound of dirt covering an important Paleo site discovered in 1978, yet still waiting for interpretation? Because, according to scholar Duncan Caldwell and other unimpeachable on-site sources, it may be the most important Paleo site in America this side of the Mississippi River. Google Mr. Caldwell, who I personally met and took on a brief tour last week, if there are any doubts about his credibility. He may be the world’s most respected Paleo authority. He left the site Friday headed for Columbia University, where he was scheduled for a guest lecture before departing for his winter Paris home.

Among the participating “amateur” archaeologists, all of them veterans of many Gramly digs worldwide, was a retired Connecticut brain surgeon and his wife — she perhaps the preeminent authority on Northeastern lithics — as well as a retired PhD chemist with degrees from Dartmouth and Cornell who’s been with Gramly from the start. That’s just a few. There were many, many others folks with equally impressive archaeological credentials.

All I can say is that now that I’ve seen “amateurs” in action, maybe I’ll get a chance to observe a “professional” dig. You know, one led by academics and state officials who delight in throwing spiteful stones at Gramly and his impeccable entourage. For me, seeing is believing and, my oh my, did I ever get an eyeful between trips to my son’s hospital bed. So stay tuned. I’m just getting started. Promise. Unless the state archaeological junta can succeed in silencing the messenger and keeping important prehistoric discoveries buried under long, lean mounds of dirt they ordered dumped.

The ice is broken. For that we can thank a daring and enthusiastic man named R.M. Gramly, a Harvard man who’s a rebel and a scholar. He’s twice displayed the courage to defy bureaucratic opposition and explore the important site, previously in 1995. And although he’s passed 70 and says he doesn’t intend to return in a leadership role, someone undoubtedly will,  maybe one of his protégés. Let’s hope so.