This summer, Route 2 drivers might have noticed a large mound of dirt in the parking lot at Milton’s Sand Bar State Park and a group of people digging beside it. This excavation team, made up of members of the University of Vermont’s Consulting Archaeology Program, uncovered Native American artifacts that date back hundreds of years.
This site on Lake Champlain has changed significantly over the centuries. The Lamoille River once emptied here, and the location was likely a seasonal campground for Native people. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps added many thousands of yards of fill to the marshy swamp that became the state park — inadvertently preserving the artifacts below.
In 2022, the UVM team conducted a dig at the site and found several large pottery shards exhibiting decoration in the style of St. Lawrence Iroquoians. They were 400 to 600 years old. Also unearthed: stone remnants from the process of making tools. Some of the stone flakes, such as flint and quartzite, were local; others came from Pennsylvania, Maine and Northern Labrador in Canada, indicating that the Indigenous residents were trading and connecting with people from far-flung places.
This summer’s low water levels made a final dig possible, and the UVM folks spent about four weeks meticulously combing the site. They found a large pottery fragment, a glass bead, a piece of a clay smoking pipe, more stone flakes and a smaller pottery shard that dates back 1,000 to 1,400 years. This was their last dig at the site, as a stormwater basin will be built there.
In the latest episode of “Stuck in Vermont,” Seven Days senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger met the crew members and watched them dig into the past.
She spoke with Seven Days about filming the episode.
How did you hear about this dig?
Like many people, I was driving past on Route 2 to get to the Champlain Islands and wondered what was going on. I found an article online about the 2022 excavation and contacted John Crock, director of the University of Vermont’s Consulting Archaeology Program. I was able to catch up with the crew on its final week of work.
Why is it important to save these artifacts?
As Crock explained, there are no written documents from Native American history, so archaeological sites are “nonrenewable,” and each “has a story to tell to piece together the Native American past here in the Northeast.” Many items, such as textiles and wood, didn’t stand the test of time. But these pottery shards and stone flakes tell a very interesting story about the social connections Native people were making, often with people from hundreds of miles away.
What was uncovered during your visit?
Program historian and research supervisor Kate Kenny found a stone shard while I was filming her. Kenny was using a one-eighth-inch mesh hardware cloth to strain the sand. The flakes are smaller than a dime, and it’s hard to see them among so many water-worn rocks, but Kenny spotted one with sharp edges and bagged it for future study.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Digging Deep | An archaeological dig at Sand Bar State Park uncovers Native American artifacts”
This article appears in Sept 24-30 2025.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!