Historic Pelham Blog Archive
September 30, 2005

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Davids Island lies just off the coast of Pelham Manor north of the New Rochelle boundary. It's history is closely entertwined with that of the Town of Pelham. Indeed, on June 3, 2005, I published to the Historic Pelham Blog a posting entitled "Davids Island Off the Coast of Pelham Manor During the Civil War".

The recorded history of Davids Island, of course, goes back well before the Civil War. Its unrecorded history, it seems, is still being documented.

On September 26, 2005, The Journal News published an excellent article by Ken Valenti who has an abiding respect for, and interest in, the history of the area that includes Pelham and surrounding lands. In the article entitled "Artifacts found on Davids Island," Mr. Valenti reports that archaeologists from Tetra Tech have begun an archaeological survey of portions of the island in connection with work by the Army Corps of Engineers as it begins a project to clean up the 78-acre island so New Rochelle can sell the island to Westchester County for conversion to a county park.

The island is clearly a likely site for evidence of Native American habitation in our area. In fact, according to Mr. Valenti's report, during the 1980s archaeologists reportedly uncovered "[a] prehistoric American Indian hunting camp believed to be from 1000 to 1500 A.D."

The archaeologists from Tetra Tech recently began digging a few of the 700 to 900 holes planned as part of the survey. While digging on September 21, archaeologists reportedly discovered quartz flakes indicative of work by Native Americans to craft stone tools or weapons. The archaeologists have begun to revise the survey plans to take account of the locations of the newly-discovered artifacts.

The million dollar question for the archaelogists, at least for the moment, seems to be whether the quartz flakes indicate the presence of a newly-discovered Native American site on the island or whether they originate from soil previously moved to the area from the nearby archaeological site excavated during the 1980s. According to the report:

"The two largest pieces of quartz were about an inch squared. While most of them are pieces that are chipped away to create a tool or sharp point for a spear or knife, one looked as if it had been intended as part of a point itself".

Native American artifacts, of course, are not the only things that the archaeologists have discovered during their survey. The same report says:

"By yesterday, nine pieces of quartz and one chip of flint sat in a tray in a city-owned building on Pelham Road, where laboratory director Robert Jacoby and his assistant, Rosa Ortega, have been cleaning and sorting almost 5,000 artifacts so far. Other than the stones, they have sorted pieces of glass from a wine bottle, buttons from military uniforms, bullets and even a small green plastic toy soldier."

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posted by Blake A. Bell @ 5:31 AM Comment

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