Greater Kennebec Valley
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fishing. This area of the Kennebec once teemed with salmon. The site chosen for the Solon dig was across from extremely remarkable ledges on the western bank of the Kennebec. The ledges are on the Embden side of the river. What makes the ledges unique are the prehistoric carvings there. The carvings show animals, humans and what have been taken for tally marks. At one time there would have been many, many more carvings. Unfortunately, huge sections of ledge were blasted away in the early twentieth century to expedite log driving. The figures and tally marks on the Embden side of the Kennebec are petroglyphs. One figure is said to resemble a dragon. It has a horse’s head, two sets of legs and an arrow-shaped tail. The “dragon” is one of over a hundred petroglyphs. The petroglyphs are the products of subtle minds. They, like arrowheads, are fossil thoughts. The destruction of so many by blasting speaks to their transitory nature. The petroglyphs were done over a long period of time. There are older pictures under more recent layers. All are “dinted.” Dinted is an archaeological term, meaning chipped
or pecked out. More petroglyphs are to be found upriver. Were there some downriver? In the 1950s, the US Army Corps of Engineers dug an enormous canal called “The Cut” on the Kennebec below Caratunk Falls. “The Cut” altered the mile-long, ages-old, channel of the Kennebec, and replaced it with a giant ditch extending from Caratunk Falls to the Route 8 bridge over the river. The cut was made with the instigation or approval of the State of Maine and/or paper mills and timber companies. One might compare the creation of the cut to the sacking of Rome by the Vandals. A natural museum was lost forever. Arrowheads cannot be so destroyed. A farmer may look to his field and swear to leave no stone unturned. He plows and then he hoes. Arrowheads are the least likely of artifacts to be damaged or destroyed. To turn up a few is only to bury others the more securely. They rest at peace even with the changes to their immediate surroundings. It is as if they promise to outlast all of time. Maine and the surrounding region is rich in arrowheads. A 1980 dig at Aziscohos Lake near the Maine-New Hampshire-Quebec border uncovered some 15,000 arrowheads,
scrapers and knives. You can find displays of arrowheads and other stone tools at museums all across the state. The Fryeburg Historical Society has a display of Pegwacket weapons and tools. The University of Maine has displays. So does the Maine State Museum. There all sorts of arrowhead and long knife designs. There are triangle, stemmed and leafed arrowheads. There are corner-notched, basal-notched and side-notched arrowheads. Why are there many arrowheads in this region and why are there so many types or styles? The number of arrowheads that have been found in this region and the variety of styles relate to the availability of flint here and the ingenuity of the particular knapper. There are pockets of flint to be found all over Maine. The Passamaquoddy used one in the Machias area. The greatest deposit in Maine, however, is Mt. Kineo. Rounded Mt. Kineo is composed of flint. Tribes from all over the northeast and as far away as Nova Scotia came here for flint. Too, there is the theory that they also came for the abundant iron pyrites to use for firestones. Stone implements believed used in early Native American workshops