To the Editor:
Chis Baer, in his article “This Was Then: Mephitis mephitis mentions,” writes that the skunk was present on the Vineyard at an archaeological site on Squibnocket Pond 500 years ago, and before.
There have been extensive faunal studies at sites on the Vineyard, that include Ritchie Roy’s 1969 book, “The Archaeology of Martha’s Vineyard,” in which six excavated sites’ faunal list didn’t include the skunk. I was a crew member on these sites. These sites included two on Squibnocket Pond, one on Menemsha Pond, and three on and near Lagoon Pond. Jessica Watson’s dissertation in 2019 analyzed 44,882 animal bones from the Hornblower II and Frisby-Butler site on Squibnocket Pond, excavated by me in 1981 and 1982. The 76 species — mammals, birds, fish, and amphibians — did not include the skunk. These sites dated back 3,000 to 4,000 years. Her species analysis on the two sites was published in 2019 in the Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society, vol. 80, pp. 17-53, and on pp. 163-164 in “Discovering a Lost Vineyard House” by Dick Burt and myself in 2021. In the same volume, Ritchie Roy’s analysis found that 4,311 animal bones didn’t include the skunk. This Colonial house site in Chilmark was excavated in 1984, and dates from 1672 to 1765. If Chris Baer is referring to the Byers and Johnson Two Sites on Martha’s Vineyard, both on Squibnocket, published in 1940 by the Peabody Museum in Andover, in addition to the early Wampanoag prior to European settlement, it had some historic Colonial artifacts as well. I would be interested to know which site Chris Baer referred to that had skunk pre-European contact.
Jim Richardson
Jim Richardson is emeritus chief curator of anthropology, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh.