The New Brunswick Telegraph Journal
By DERWIN GOWAN
Wednesday 04 February 2004
Mill Lake began to reveal its secrets 15 to 20 years ago when a decaying dam across the outfall allowed the water level to drop.
Brent Suttie stumbled on the secrets of the Charlotte County lake in 1995 while out for a walk in the fall with his father and grandfather - but the 17-year-old high school student did not realize then that this discovery would set the course for life.
That did not come until 1999 when he showed the ancient artifacts from the Middle Archaic period to Dr. David Black, his professor of anthropology at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton.
During the fall of 2001 and the summer and fall of 2003, working on his masters thesis with Dr. Black as his supervisor, Mr. Suttie and assistants from UNB's Geoarchaeology Research Group excavated two sites - Mill Lake Bluff and Mill Lake Island.
The provincial Archaeological Services Section of the Culture and Sport Secretariat paid the cost of radiocarbon dating samples from both sites. Mr. Suttie sent the samples to Bata Analytic in Miami, Fla., the largest radiocarbon dating firm in the world, in November and got the results back in December.
The radiocarbon tests showed people passed by the Mill Lake Island site 6,000 years ago, and Mill Lake Bluff 7,000 years ago - the oldest proven sites of human habitation in what today is known as New Brunswick.
Mill Lake, surrounded by forests in the centre of Charlotte County, drains into the larger Lake Utopia which, in turn, spills into the Magaguadavic River and on to the Bay of Fundy.
People dammed the outfall of Mill Lake at the end of the 1800s, maybe the start of the 1900s. Mr. Suttie says the remains of the old dam still holds back a metre or so of water.
But, the lake has dropped back enough toward its natural level to reveal the faint traces of people who passed by many, many years before.
Mr. Suttie said Mill Lake Island, where he found the artifacts back in 1995, is no longer an island, properly speaking - more a point sticking into the lake
The tiny lake has other archeological sites, as does Lake Utopia itself, but one masters thesis can only accomplish so much - leaving much more to discover in the future.
The Mill Lake Island site apparently served the Middle Archaic people as a hunting and habitation site.
"We know, for instance, they were going after small fish," Mr. Suttie said.
Besides fish, the ashes from old cooking fires revealed remains of white tailed deer, probably moose, small carnivores - mink or muskrat, and reptiles - maybe turtles.
They also found stone tools for heavy woodworking. The quartz out of which they fashioned the tools seems to have come from the Mill Lake Bluff site which apparently served as a quarry. The tools include axes, gouges, scrapers and other implements, leading lead Mr. Suttie to ask whether they made dugout canoes from the large pine and hemlock trees that dominated the forest.
Mr. Suttie and his supervisor Dr. Black believe the descendants of the people who left their cooking fires and tools at Mill Lake still live in the area today.
"There is every reason to believe that they were the ancestors of the aboriginal people living here today. You can't say that because there's no way to prove it," Dr. Black said.
"They are the distant ancestors of people living in the area today," Mr. Suttie asserted, but said that "it gets way too hazy" to apply the terms "Passamaquoddy," "Mi'kmaq" and "Maliseet" to people of this era.
Mr. Suttie has found no human remains at Mill Lake to date. Mr. Suttie and Dr. Black keep aboriginal leaders aware of their work and would inform them if they discovered a burial ground.
New Brunswick now has two proven Middle Archaic sites at Mill Lake. This epoch ran from 7,500-6,000 years ago. The best known Late Archaic site, 6,000-3,000 years ago, in New Brunswick is Cow Point on Grand Lake.
Mr. Suttie, a 25-year-old Blacks Harbour native who graduated from high school in Stanley, will defend his masters thesis in September, then hopes to start work on his doctoral degree in October.
UNB does not offer a doctoral program in anthropology, but he hopes to continue the work he started at Mill Lake in 1995.