Events are free but require registration at tinyurl.com/pinehawk-2024
Questions? Email friends.of.pinehawk@gmail.com

Archaeological Discoveries in New England Wednesday, October 9, 7-8:30PM, in person at the Acton Memorial Library and via Zoom.

Peabody award winning Smithsonian filmmaker Ted Timreck shares documentary footage from two little known discoveries that show the potential of what might be found anywhere in the New England countryside.

Eric Johnson of UMass-Amherst provides a retrospective on the excavation of this remarkable 4,000-year-old site in Marlborough, Massachusetts.

Adult Archaeology Walk Saturday, October 19, 10AM–noon, in-person only.  

Bettina Abe, Acton trail volunteer and retired member of Acton’s Conservation Division, will lead a brisk hike along the Nashoba Brook Ttrail, with stops at the stone chamber and Native American ceremonial sites. Trail conditions can be rocky, uneven, and often wet, and thus participation is limited. Registrants will receive a detailed email several days before the walk. Limited to 20, ages 17 and up. 

Burying the Trowel: A History of Controversy and Innovation in New England’s Cultural Stone Features Debate Tuesday, October 22, 7-8:30PM,  in person at Acton Memorial Library and via Zoom. 

Unusual stone features dot the woodlands and hillsides of New England, and their provenance has been subject to many theories and debate. Cultural anthropologist Caitlin O’Riordan will give an overview of the changing ways these features have been understood over time, and the friction this has caused between avocational researchers and professional archaeologists. 

Join a group discussion of this landmark environmental history by William Cronon, which offers an original and profound explanation of the effects European colonists’ sense of property and their pursuit of capitalism had upon the ecosystems of New England. 

Acton Arboretum Walk  Saturday, November 16, 9:30-11AM in-person only.   

Bettina Abe and Kevin Gallant will lead a special tour through the Acton Arboretum to observe what may be Native American CSL’s (Ceremonial Stone Landscapes).  Limited to 25. 

Assist with trail and site maintenance on the Nashoba Brook Conservation Land’s Trail Through Time, a multicultural heritage trail in North Acton. Local Scout troops are also invited to join. Rain date is Sunday, November 17. Limited to 25, ages 13 and up. 

Archaeologist David Gutbrod will share several experiences and discoveries encountered in his professional life.  David is a busy team member of a local archaeological firm and also serves as Chair of Westford’s Historical Commission. Earlier this year he also did the research for the very first application of Acton’s new Archaeological Protection bylaw, providing an extensive report on a significant site in North Acton. David will share some highlights of this Acton project as well as others around the US, including recent remote sensing projects conducted in Worcester Cemetery, Tampa Bay’s lost cemetery, and the hidden and abandoned remains of the former village of Ethel, Florida.

At the end of the 1780s, a group of Mohegans bemoaned that “[t]he Times are exceedingly altered, yea the Times have turned everything topside down.”  That was certainly true for indigenous peoples between the Appalachians and the Great Lakes, where a half-century of war and displacement had crested with the U.S. victory and the end of usefully competing European powers. But it was also true for those in southern New England who a century earlier had survived the devastations of King Philip’s War.  Daniel Mandell, Professor of History Emeritus, Truman State University, and author of Tribe, Race, History: Native Americans in Southern New England, 1780-1880 will present how the thousands of Native people in southern New England were involved in and impacted by the Revolution, and how they sought to secure their rights in different ways. Cosponsored with Acton 250.