The Vail site is a prehistoric Native American archaeological site in the remote north of

Oxford County, Maine Oxford County is a county in the state of Maine, United States. As of the 2020 Census, the county had a population of 57,777. Its county seat is the town of Paris. The county was formed on March 4, 1805, by the Massachusetts General Court in th ...

. It is located along an ancient course of the Magalloway River in an area that is occasionally under the waters of the man-made

Aziscohos Lake The Magalloway River is a river in northwestern Maine and northern New Hampshire in the United States. It is a tributary of the Androscoggin River, which flows to the Kennebec River at Merrymeeting Bay in Maine, near the Atlantic Ocean. The total ...

. The site was discovered in 1979, and has been the subject of several archaeological excavations since then. The site includes at least eight encampment areas (tent sites) and a significant kill zone where the Native Americans killed a large number of

caribou Reindeer (in North American English, known as caribou if wild and ''reindeer'' if domesticated) are deer in the genus ''Rangifer''. For the last few decades, reindeer were assigned to one species, ''Rangifer tarandus'', with about 10 subspe ...

. A section of the site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980; this listing was enlarged to in 1984.

Description

Six of the eight tent sites excavated in 1980 exhibited significant evidence of tool work and a number of well-shaped stone projectile points. The other two tent sites were located closer to the ancient river channel, and may have been subject to flooding. These sites are estimated to have supported a population of 36 to 60 individuals, and are believed to have been occupied for only 8 to 10 years. They were laid out in an arc measuring about in length. Finds at these tent sites are closely correlated to finds at the kill site, which was located on the opposite shore of the ancient channel. The site is believed to have been occupied by Paleo-Indians about 13,000 years ago. The ten-year occupation period is consistent with the practices of Alaskan Natives in historic times, who would occupy camps for a similar time period, abandoning them when the caribou herd that traversed the area was depleted.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine Geography of Oxford County, Maine National Register of Historic Places in Oxford County, Maine

Description

See also

References