Name: Richard Boisvert
Occupation: N.H. State Archaeologist
What made you get started in the field of archaeology? How long have you been doing it?
I became interested as a small kid and I just got my interest and I never lost it. I decided it would be something fun to do and did training in college and graduate school, the whole bit and it just sounded like something fun to do. It’s outdoors, I like that, and it’s puzzle solving, and I like that, so it seemed like a good idea.
How does one go to school to get into archaeology?
Well archaeology is a subarea of anthropology, so you go to a school with an anthropology department and you obviously want to see one with an archaeologist in it. And like anything else, you take the courses, you get trained, you find that some parts of the world are more interesting than others. Some people specialize in certain things, like how people make and use stone tools, others look at broad questions like how did civilizations form. Some look at very detailed things. Other people look at regional archaeology, like what’s been going on in the southeast corner of the United States for the last 12,000 years. It’s just a matter of interest… Like so many other disciplines there are different ways to slice it.
What are some of the most fascinating things you’ve ever been part of discovering?
That’s always a good one cause you can sort of look at anything as being the most interesting. The work we’ve been doing in northern New Hampshire, in Jefferson, Randolph, Berlin, Colebrook has focused on the very first occupants of the region and that’s very interesting. We’ve had good fortune in finding sites that are very productive. You’re learning how people lived in a time when the climate was much colder than it is today, very nearly a glacial climate. The glaciers weren’t there, but it was about that cold. And to look at how people adapted to that, by our standards, very harsh environment and how they were successful for 1,500 years before the weather finally changed. That I find to be very interesting. There are sites among those that have been very productive that had either very dense concentrations of artifacts or unusual concentrations… We’ve found areas where we’ve found very specialized activity for making certain kinds of tools.
What are some of the coolest discoveries you’ve made/seen in Concord, or New Hampshire?
Last fall we did some work in Jefferson and found one of these very dense concentrations of tools in an area that was spatially in the order of 25 by 20 feet sort of in an oval and had probably a hundred tools which for that time period it’s very early. We’re talking 12,000 years ago, and lots of chipping debris to go with it. Some very unusual artifacts and that unique blend was one of the neater things I’ve done in this area. Concord area, I haven’t done as much in the direct Concord area. We’ve done some surveys here and we tested out ways to find sites.
What is the typical day of an archaeologist like?
A field day is really not all that different than being a construction worker. You roll out early, get everybody together, make sure you have all the equipment, all the supplies and so forth, make sure everyone’s accounted for. We have sort of a hierarchical system, where I’ll be in charge of lots of supervisors and maybe some specialty teams, doing mapping or something like that, and we put in a full eight hour day. People are assigned to specific kinds of tasks and it’s usually excavation on a site or it’s survey where we’re digging small holes in straight lines through the woods on regularly spaced intervals… And there’s paperwork. It’s not just the digging, but the recording is really more important than the digging when you get down to it.
If you could go on an archaeological dig anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?
It depends on the time of year I suppose. I’ve worked a little bit in southwestern France and that’s a nice place. I wouldn’t mind going back there. Really interesting sites, great food. A lot of people talk about Egypt and stuff like that, but pyramids don’t do much for me. I like studying hunter, gatherers and people who were well pre-industrial, pre-agriculture. For whatever reason I find those societies more interesting. I wouldn’t mind doing a little work in the Arctic. There were people living up there in really tough circumstances, by our standards really nasty, but they didn’t think it was nasty. They thought it was normal.
At times do you feel your desk is an archaeological site?
Indeed. Yeah there’s things buried here. Sometimes it gets disturbed and its hard to figure out what came first and second. I have a lot of things going and my excuse is that I will either spend a lot of time putting things away or taking care of immediate demands and sometimes I’m not too sure where to put things so it kind of sits there. I could be neater. I’m more organized in the field than I am in the office, but there is some organization to this chaos.
How close did Indiana Jones get to nailing the outfit you typically wear to a work site?
The hat doesn’t really work well. It’s too hot and heavy. The rest of the field clothes, yeah maybe. Just casual hiking, working clothes. We’re not real wild about Indiana Jones, but I suppose he’s better than Lara Croft. It’s all about the adventure, the expedition. There’s a little bit out there that appeals to people, but in reality the excitement comes in a low key form. It is very exciting for us when we make certain discoveries, when we put the pieces of the puzzle together, but we don’t usually have fist fights with Nazis.
How often do people send you stuff?
It’s pretty routine. Sporadic, but over the long haul routine. Many times its just an interesting, odd shaped natural rock that looks like it might have been a tool, but when you look at it with a practiced eye it’s not. On the other hand, people have found some pretty wonderful artifacts. So it’s fairly common and we welcome people sending stuff into us. We’re always interested.
If you weren’t in the field of archaeology, what would you be doing?
That’s a good question. I might be involved with geology. I’d probably be somewhere in the sciences that take you outdoors and I’ve always been interested in geology. Photography has always been interesting. That might be what I’d like too. I like the idea of big puzzles to solve and forensic work might be interesting… So it would be something in the field sciences or forensic research. Given that I’ve been doing this for a very long time it’s hard for me to jump tracks and go in a totally different direction.
Hidden talent?
Bad puns. I suppose a little bit of merchandising. I volunteer at the local swap shop in town and its great fun to have someone come in that’s sort of interested in something send them home with it. My goal is to put as much of the items back out the door.
Guilty pleasure?
I would say certain strains of science fiction or for a while I couldn’t get enough of Australian comedy. They’ve got a really different sense of humor.
