Passadumkeag, a Red Paint Cemetery, Thirty–Five Years After Moorehead

Extract

Present-day knowledge of the Red Paint burial complex in Maine rests chiefly upon the work of Willoughby and of Moorehead, done in the latter part of the last, and the first quarter of the present, century. Without doubt, the most extensive report on the subject is Moorehead's Archaeology of Maine, in which summary accounts of excavations at twelve Red Paint sites were set forth. Unfortunately, certain details pertaining to the burials were obscure. In particular, more data were desirable upon the character of the deposit—whether burial or ceremonial offering—as well as upon the indications of age. With the purpose of securing this information, the authors in June, 1947, undertook limited excavations on the Hathaway farm at Passadumkeag, Maine. Here Moorehead had excavated seventeen graves; without exhausting the possibilities, we were able to uncover seven more.