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Richmond duo digging for historical treasure

RICHMOND -- Leith Smith and Bill Burgess are digging for buried historical treasure in an otherwise typical, modern-looking front lawn overlooking the Kennebec River.

It's not a pirate's chest full of gold coins and jewels they're after.

The pair, state archaeologists, are digging for history, one shovelful at a time, working to document the site of one, and it appears likely two, Colonial forts.

They're documenting what they believe to be the site of Fort Richmond, which stood from 1740 to 1755, and an earlier fort they believe was on the same site as early as 1721. They're doing so to make way for a new bridge across the river between Richmond and Dresden.

"The main thing is to document it before it gets bulldozed away," Smith said of the artifacts and other evidence of the two old forts which gave settlers to the area shelter from the French and sometimes-hostile Native Americans.

The deteriorated 80-year-old swing bridge that takes traffic across the Kennebec River between Richmond and Dresden is targeted for replacement in 2013.

As part of the preparation for its replacement, archaeologists have been investigating what's beneath the ground at the bridge site. While they are only in the second of likely three phases of work there, they've already found a lot.

"Yeah, this is a cool site," Burgess said.

Historians already had some idea the site on the Richmond side of the bridge was also the approximate site of the second Fort Richmond, built starting in 1740 and standing until it was dismantled in 1955.

Smith, an archaeologist with the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, believes they have confirmed the location was the site of the 1740 to 1755 fort. He said there also appears to be evidence of rebuilding, of a stone wall built over rubble. That would indicate a period of demolition and rebuilding, which may well indicate that the earlier, 1721 fort may have been on the same location.

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Lupine symbolism is said to be one of the defining points of the Indo-European Traditions, and indeed it is hard to cite an Indo-European civilization in which the wolf did not occupy a role of prominence; from the birth of Romulus and Remus and the foundation of Rome through to modern times the wolf has always occupied an eminent position of privilege in the mind of the Indo-European. This is even evident today – even Hollywood cannot bypass the lonely figure of the wolf at night, for the werewolf has survived on in popular myth to this day. A number of important deities, ranging from Óðin to the Greek Apollo, can be found with a wolf by their side. That the wolf, and occasionally, its canine cousin the dog, were important ritual animals cannot be doubted; at times though the important role of these animals crossed over from the natural world of the wilderness into the civilized world of man, where the boundaries between human and animal became blurred. One such occupant of this transitional space is the werewolf; another figure is that of the Nordic or Teutonic Berserker. Even older still, there is the tale of the Vrātya, dating back to the most archaic elements of Vedic society, almost completely buried by the past. The Berserker and the Vrātya together constitute what is perhaps one of the oldest traditions, for both share a number of significant features in common, which can be found dispersed amongst other Indo-European peoples also; martial brotherhoods existed among the (Indo-European) Greeks, Scythians, Persians, Dacians, Celts, and Germans in which initiates magically assumed lupine features.[1]Known partly for their fury in combat, partly for the use of magical means to subdue the enemy, these myths persist today in the popular myth of the werewolf. Whilst the literal rendition of the berserker is ‘warriors in shirts (sekr) of bear’, the berserkers were thought to be also able to shift their form into that of a wolf. [2] For the purpose of this writing we will concentrate only on the symbolism of the wolf.

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