Next frontier in tribal research is underwater

WHAT LIES BENEATH: A coring barge used in a URI Graduate School of Oceanography initiative exploring submerged ancient landscapes. / COURTESY URI
WHAT LIES BENEATH: A coring barge used in a URI Graduate School of Oceanography initiative exploring submerged ancient landscapes. / COURTESY URI

The oral history of the Narragansett Indian Tribe and research being done by scientists at the University of Rhode Island have intersected in a project exploring a submerged ancient landscape in the area of Greenwich Bay, along routes that reach to the shores of the Ocean State and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean.
The project funded by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is the first on submerged ancient landscapes that includes a partnership with tribal historic-preservation representatives, according to information from the federal agency.
“Usually the tribal historic-preservation office works with projects on land,” said Doug Harris, a preservationist for ceremonial landscapes for the Charlestown-based office of the Narragansett tribe. “But according to the tribal oral history, the ancient villages of the Narragansett tribe were out where the ocean is now. The oral history is that the waters began to rise and the people had to evacuate.”
The interest in landscapes on the submerged continental shelf has become more prominent because of the attention to offshore energy development, said URI oceanography professor John King. He is leading the scientific research on the project with David Robinson, a marine archaeologist at URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography, in collaboration with Harris and the Narragansett tribe.
“It raises issues about how to manage offshore development. There are significant impacts,” said King. “There are submerged cultural resources. There are important issues for the Narragansett tribe. Tribal oral history and science are starting to converge on what the truth is.”
The Rhode Island research, informally called the Submerged Paleo-Landscape Project, was awarded a $2 million contract from the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, King said at a June 20 meeting of stakeholders to discuss the Rhode Island ocean Special Area Management Plan.
A final report is due Sept. 30, according to information from BOEM.
New England states, especially in southern New England, “… are increasingly becoming the focus of proposed offshore wind-energy development to supplement or fulfill BOEM’s alternative energy objectives,” according to the agency background material on the project. “The absence of a scientifically proven, standardized, ‘best practices’ methodology for identifying submerged relict landscapes on the Atlantic OCS, (Outer Continental Shelf) and the ancient tribal archaeological resources these landscapes may potentially contain, has long been a concern among federal, state and tribal historic- preservation officers and has made environmental decision-making problematic for the BOEM.” Only three such studies have been made in the past three decades and “… these studies have not integrated tribal historic-preservation concerns or tribal research partners as part of their research designs,” according to BOEM.
“We have archaeological evidence from about 11,000 years ago,” said Robinson. The evidence of human occupation is stone tools from about 11,000 to 500 years ago, he said. “Hundreds of artifacts have been found by local residents, mostly fishermen.”
King said the artifacts raise “issues about how to manage offshore development. There are significant impacts. There are submerged cultural resources.”
“On the continental shelf, certain scenarios say there are landscapes that need to be protected. How do we identify these landscapes?” said King. “Evidence is becoming quite compelling for people living on the shoreline about 23,000 years ago. That’s way older than previously thought about how long people have been on the landscape.”
The continental shelf extends out various distances along different shorelines, he said.
The four-year Paleo-Landscape Project includes training young members of the Narragansett tribe to assist with the research, including diving, said Robinson. Five members of the tribe are working with the project so far, and they, in turn, will train other members of the tribe, including college students, in some of the archaeological research.
The Rhode Island research project is starting inland in the area of Greenwich Bay, but that’s just a small part of the area of longer-term interest.
“That’s about 25 percent,” Robinson said.”About three-quarters of it is offshore.”
The scientific research tries to reconstruct human land use – where people lived, hunted and practiced religion, said King. “One hypothesis is that people tended to live along the shoreline. There is a lot of connectivity using waterways with sites inland and sites offshore. It’s not easy to find the sites offshore. “We have found a series of sites in Western Greenwich Bay and by Gorton Pond,” said King. “It’s a series of sites about 15,000 years old connected by a river system, going to the coast and offshore. “The sites we’re going to investigate dovetail nicely with the [state’s ocean Special Area Management Plan] SAMP,” said King.
“We’ve gathered a lot of data in the course of conducting the Ocean SAMP. A lot of data was gathered by Deepwater Wind,” King said.
Providence-based Deepwater Wind has a planned five-turbine, wind-energy project off Block Island currently being reviewed by the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council and several federal agencies, the council’s Executive Director Grover Fugate said at the SAMP meeting.
Deepwater Wind is also one of nine energy companies that have qualified to compete for two offshore blocks of three-square miles each to be leased by the U.S. Bureau of Energy Management, Fugate said. The blocks are about 15 miles offshore in what’s called the Area of Mutual Interest by Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
The leases will be awarded July 31 and extensive assessments will be required before final construction of the offshore wind farms will move ahead. A minimum of four years is anticipated before energy production would begin, he said.
“Finding sites offshore, in this case, is trying to find the old paleo-landscape that was impacted as sea level rose,” said Robinson. “As we’ve seen with recent storms now, there’s a lot of damage. Our challenge is to find the elements of the paleo-landscape that survived. We use remote sensing instruments. We’ll excavate with an underwater dredge like an underwater vacuum cleaner.
“We may find burial sites,” said Robinson.” If we do, we’ll consult with the tribe.”
The project is confirmation that collaboration with scientists and working with the federal government can have an exceptionally positive outcome, said Harris.
“It’s an exciting time when the tribal process can interface with the scientific process and the regulatory process and lead to cultural, social and scientific breakthroughs,” Harris said. “This submerged landscape research – this is a major frontier.” •

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