Currently, the Brian D. Jones Site is the oldest known PaleoIndian site in Southern New England. Archaeological investigations at the site were carried out before bridge construction, in accordance with federal and state laws that govern the identification of cultural resources during development projects. The excavations required for the construction of the bridge directly facilitated these deeper archaeological excavations. The Connecticut Department of Transportation committed to excavating 100% of the site in recognition of the site's unparalleled research potential. Analysis of the site artifacts (over 20,000) is currently in process and will take several years.

The site was located approximately five to seven feet beneath the modern ground surface where the new Old Farms Road bridge is today, and all of the site within the construction footprint of the bridge was excavated (removed). It is important for several reasons, but mostly because excavations provided archaeologists and the general public with an unprecedented window into life during the Paleoindian Period in Connecticut (approximately 12,500 years ago), the earliest period of human occupation in New England. Currently, the Brian D. Jones Site is the oldest known archaeological site in southern New England and one of the oldest in the Northeastern United States.

Today, there is not much to see at the site itself, save the new bridge that was built after the site was excavated. However, if you walk around this portion of the Farmington River, particularly in the Fisher Meadows Recreation area, you can see how much higher the river terrace is on the west side of the river. This elevated landform is the same terrace that Native Americans traveled to and camped along during the Paleoindian and Early Archaic periods. These campsites were buried by thousands of years of flooding from the Farmington River, which repeatedly washed sand over the site, burying it.

Over 35 000 artifacts, including 15,000 lithic (stone) objects, and the remnants of over 20 cultural features were found. Cultural features are non-portable traces of past human behavior, such as open fire pits (hearths) and posts. These were observable through soil staining and dense accumulations of charred wood and charcoal. Features provide a wealth of information, including the ability to radiocarbon date the site. This is how we know that the Brian D. Jones Site is the oldest in southern New England. For example, a hearth was radiocarbon-dated during the second week of excavation to 12,500 years ago! When the scientific analyses are completed over the coming years, the artifacts will be curated at the Office of State Archaeology, located at the University of Connecticut, where they will be available for research. Museum displays of selected artifacts are also in preliminary stages of being planned when the analysis is complete.

No, there were not. Preservation of human remains after such a long period of time in this region is highly unlikely. Most archaeological sites associated with Native Americans or Europeans do not contain human remains. When human remains are discovered they must, under State law, be reported to the police/Medical Examiner. If they are not part of a crime scene, they are referred to the State Archaeologist by the Medical Examiner’s Office. The State Archaeologist consults with stakeholders associated with identified human remains (if Native American, the Native American Heritage Advisory Council, or descendant communities) and develops a plan for removal and reburial, if keeping the burials in place is not possible.

Digging on state, municipal, land trust, water company, or private property requires the owner's permission and sometimes an archaeological permit from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection or the Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office. Avocational collectors often collect surface finds on private property when they have obtained the proper permissions. It is important for collectors to report their findings to the Office of State Archaeology or the State Historic Preservation Office. These artifacts can be identified by professional archaeologists, museums, or educational institutions. An important find or suggestion of a larger site can lead to a request for a formal excavation with the owner's permission. An agreement about the ownership of artifacts should be part of any consent to conduct excavation. Repeated unauthorized digging or destruction of historic sites usually leads to police patrols and surveillance cameras to arrest violators. It is against the law to collect artifacts on state land in Connecticut.

Metal detection activity is subject to the same ownership laws. Occasionally metal detectors are used in an archaeological investigation when metal objects are abundant such as at battlefield sites. Widespread use of metal by Native Americans was not common until Europeans colonists provided metal objects.

Scientific studies take time. Artifacts must first be cleaned, catalogued and inventoried before any additional analyses can be completed. The inventory process includes recording all information about an artifact, including its location within the site, depth, soil description, as well as spatial relationship to all other excavated artifacts or features. In this case, over 35,000 artifacts were recovered, requiring a large amount of time to properly clean, inventory, and catalogue them. Archaeologists have completed many analyses, but some are completed at outside laboratories. These include protein residue analyses, identification of microscopic botanical remains, and microscopic use-wear analyses of stone tools, which determine how a tool was used in the past. Following all these analyses, the results are presented in a comprehensive technical report. The general findings are shared with the archaeological community via publication and the general public in presentations, publications and museum exhibits.

If you find any artifacts in your backyard, you should contact Dr. Sarah Sportman, the State Archaeologist. Her email is [email protected]

IIn the United States, artifacts are generally regarded as the landowner's property unless an alternate agreement has been worked out. In this case, a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) stipulates the long-term preservation and curation of artifacts from the Brian D. Jones Site. This MOA is among the Town of Avon, State of Connecticut (Department of Transportation), Federal Highways Administration, Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office, Office of State Archaeology, and federally recognized Native American Tribes in Connecticut.

In 2014, Brian D. Jones led a preliminary investigation of the bridge construction footprint and also the excavation of a Woodland Period archaeological site (2,700 years ago to 1524 AD) located on the bank of the Farmington River. Very few artifacts were found during this investigation. However, deeply buried soils were discovered that were recognized as having strong potential to contain intact, older archaeological sites. The recommendations of the findings included further (deeper) investigations when construction plans were finalized. These deeper investigations were carried out in 2019 when the site was discovered just prior to construction.

The sitting area offers a nice vantage of the Fisher Meadows Recreation area and the location of the archaeological site. If you look across the river, you can see the relatively flat landscape that was attractive to peoples during the Paleoindian (approx. 13,000 – 9,000 years ago), Archaic (approx. 9,000 – 2,700 years ago), and Woodland periods (approx. 2,700 years ago to 1524 AD), as well as the historical period. No archaeological sites were found in the area.

The site was located on the west side of the river and was approximately 206 square meters (0.05 acres) in size, within the construction footprint. The complete bounds of the site are unknown but are being investigated so the remainder of the site may be preserved by the Town.

Levees are embankments of water-deposited sediment that build along the edges of river channels. Because levees are slightly higher and better drained than the floodplains behind them, they proved more attractive for past human settlement. The Brian D. Jones Site is situated on a Pleistocene-age levee of the Farmington River. The Pleistocene (colloquially the Ice Age) is a geologic epoch dating from 2.58 million to 11,700 years ago; this time period is defined by the advancement and retreat of glaciers in the northern hemisphere coincided with the modern ocean circulation patterns. We are currently living in the Holocene, the geologic epoch that followed the Pleistocene, and is marked by glacial retreat and an overall warming trend in the global climate, which has been dramatically accelerated by the Industrial Revolution and human-related carbon emissions. During the Holocene, the older Pleistocene levee on which the Brian D. Jones Site became gradually buried beneath a protective layer of river-borne sediments. Archaeological sites in such environments can become deeply buried over thousands of years.

When the last glacier receded from Connecticut, it left an irregular topography of hills on top of the bedrock. These hills, some large and some small, were full of a jumble of melted glacial debris (boulders, rocks, sand, and gravel). A large enough pile of debris blocked the Farmington River from continuing to flow southeastward. In Farmington, it took a sharp northward path and flowed northward until there was a break in the Metacomet Ridge in the Tariffville section of Simsbury, CT. Between the sharp bend in the river in Farmington up to Tariffville, the waters are uncharacteristically slow-moving, placid, with a mostly sandy gravely riverbed. This section of the river is exceptionally good for canoeists and kayakers. During the PaleoIndian time period, the slow-moving waters would be perfect for a riverbank camp since the location would provide abundant water, fishing resources, easy access to both sides of the river (because of the shallow depth), and easy access to trade and transportation.

No, the Farmington Valley was not created by the Farmington River. The Farmington Valley predates the river by almost two hundred million years!

The valley is part of a rift valley that occurred when North America slowly tore away from the northern part of Africa. As the east coast tore its connection with Africa, a number of rift valleys occurred up and down the coast. Here in Connecticut, we call the rift valley the Connecticut Valley (geologically, it’s called the Hartford Basin). The slowly-sinking rift valley began about 190 million years ago and was an active rift valley for about 15 million years. As the valley floor sank, it filled up with sediments deposited by ancient rivers. The sediments were buried, compressed, and turn into sedimentary rock. The famous Portland brownstone is one kind of rock that formed from the ancient layers.

Yes! There was a time long ago, beginning around 250 million years ago when you could walk from Connecticut and step onto the northwestern part of Africa without getting your feet wet. The Earth’s crust is fractured into a number of sections called plates, and these plates move. Sometimes they bash into each other (creating mountain ranges and sometimes volcanoes), sometimes they move away from each other (creating rift valleys on land), and sometimes they grind past each other (such as the San Andreas Fault, an area prone to constant earthquakes, and occasionally some are catastrophically powerful). Finally, about 250 million years ago, all landmasses crunched together to form one supercontinent called Pangaea. Pangaea existed for tens of millions of years until the landmasses began wrenching away from each other about 200 million years ago. That’s when our story of the rift valley in Connecticut begins!

Yes! Absolutely. The great cracks on the sides of the rift valley tapped into the molten material below the crust, and the result was many lava eruptions, each of which covered much of the valley floor with hot lava. The lava cooled into a hard igneous rock called basalt. Basalt is more resistant to erosion, and the Avon Mountain is capped with two of the three layers of basalt in the Connecticut Valley. There are seven layers of rock in the Valley, and they alternate between sedimentary and igneous rocks. The Farmington Valley is made of sedimentary rock, and it’s the oldest layer of rock. Avon Mountain is made up of the next three layers, and two of them are made of igneous rocks, which give Avon Mountain its height.

Yes! You got it!

When the last glacier receded from Connecticut, it left an irregular topography of hills on top of the bedrock. These hills, some large and some small, were full of a jumble of melted glacial debris (boulders, rocks, sand, and gravel). A large enough pile of debris blocked the Farmington River from continuing to flow southeastward. In Farmington, it took a sharp northward path and flowed northward until there was a break in the Metacomet Ridge in the Tariffville section of Simsbury, CT. Between the sharp bend in the river in Farmington up to Tariffville, the waters are uncharacteristically slow-moving, placid, with a mostly sandy gravely riverbed. This section of the river is exceptionally good for canoeists and kayakers. During the PaleoIndian time period, the slow-moving waters would be perfect for a riverbank camp since the location would provide abundant water, fishing resources, easy access to both sides of the river (because of the shallow depth), and easy access to trade and transportation.