Maine History Online

The next culture to appear in Maine, the Early Archaic, presents an equally thin archaeological record. With upland game scarce and the coastal and estuarial systems flooded by rising sea levels, Maine presented a harsh environment for human settlement.

Earlier archaeologists believed the forests were mostly evergreens, but new studies suggest a richer and more varied scene, with oak-grove, wetland, and flood-plain micro-environments more accommodating to human needs. Perhaps Maine was peopled by small hunting-fishing-foraging bands exploiting niches such as these.

As for the Paleoindians, they either followed the caribou northward, intermingled with a new people from the Great Lakes region, or remained on site and developed a new, more complex subsistence pattern adapted to small mammals, plants, moose, and fish. Recent researchers favor continuity more than replacement.

In the Archaic period, 10,000 to 7,000 years ago, deciduous trees characteristic of a more temperate climate began moving northward, increasing the biodiversity of the Maine forest. As temperatures warmed some 7,000 years ago, oaks became the dominant species.

The change in climate and vegetation affected food sources, lifestyles, and culture. Indigenous populations began shifting from somewhat random hunting and gathering to moving seasonally to specific and regular locations to hunt, fish and collect food. A stable environment enabled these changes.

Also during this period, archaic peoples manufactured new cutting tools with sharp edges maintained by whetstones and processed a variety of plants by grinding, milling, boiling, and roasting; they stored seeds, roots, and nuts for winter use and cooked plants and meat by plunging heated stones into water contained in a woven basket.

Like Paleoindians, they hunted caribou, but also relied on deer, bear, beaver, muskrat, otter, birds, and turtles. As runs of anadromous fish became more predictable and abundant, they caught them with spears and in brush weirs and nets of root or bark. On the coast they gathered shellfish and captured sea birds, ducks, geese, and the now-extinct great auk.

The Maritime phase of the Archaic culture, known in Maine as the Moorehead phase, brought hunting of seals, walruses, porpoises, migratory fish, sea birds, bottom fish, and swordfish. Maritime Archaic peoples used heavy woodworking tools to construct large dugout canoes and deployed these vessels far out at sea harpooning swordfish and traveling across a 100-mile gulf to Nova Scotia.

The Maritime Archaic also includes some of the most mysterious and controversial people in the Northeast: the so-called Red Paint People, who appeared on the scene between 5,000 and 3,500 years ago.

The most intriguing feature of this culture is the use of large quantities of iron oxide sprinkled across grave vaults that included ritual slate spear-points, lance tips, charms, amulets, and ornaments. This unusual mortuary ritualism implies a growing social complexity in Archaic society – and evidence of an extensive trade network to Massachusetts, Eastern New York, Labrador, and Newfoundland.

When the last glacier melted and the sea flooded, numerous changes occurred. Up to about 8,000 years ago, the Gulf of Maine was a huge inland basin called the DeGeer Sea, with only a narrow opening to the Atlantic. When the estuaries, flats, barrier beaches, and salt marshes were flooded, the coastal zone became unproductive.

Sea levels became stable only about 5,000 years ago, and as the Gulf opened up, the flow of water brought more fish and shellfish and Archaic people were quick to adapt to the new resources.

Between 4,700 and 3,500 years ago, Maine experienced the effects of another worldwide warming trend that brought deciduous mast-bearing trees to central Maine. These changes are reflected in artifacts like mortars, pestles, and other grinding implements used for processing and preserving seeds, nuts, berries, and roots – tools that may have prepared the way for a horticultural revolution at the end of this period.

With new food sources, the population grew. People began making and using a small stemmed projectile point that became the single most numerous class of artifacts in the region, which have been found on riverbanks, lake and pond shores, near bogs, on meadow margins, beside springs, along the coast, at the heads of estuaries, and near stone quarries. Late Archaic peoples took advantage of the newly diverse food chain – from shellfish soup to nuts.