The Bailey Site

The New York State Museum completed excavations at the Bailey Site near Belgium, Onondaga County, New York prior to renovation of the Route 31 bridge over the Seneca River by the New York State Department of Transportation. The site consists of the remains of a small horticultural hamlet dating circa A.D. 1400-1450. Excavations produced evidence of one structure as well as small hearths, small and large storage pits, and debris scatters associated with pottery manufacture and stone tool production. Analysis of the contents of the storage pits, suggests that the site was occupied for much of the year.

Artifacts recovered from the site include remnants of incised, cord-marked, and stamped pottery, projectile points, bifaces, scrapers, ground stone adzes, hammerstones, and netsinkers. The majority of these artifacts were manufactured from local materials acquired from clay and stone outcrops located near the site. Clay smoking pipe fragments were also recovered and document leisure activities at the site. 

Subsistence remains including wild turkey, white-tailed deer, black bear, beaver, freshwater trout, turtle, and eastern cottontail rabbit were recovered along with the charred remains of corn, beans, sunflower, squash, strawberry, elderberry, pin cherry, blueberry, hawthorn, and wild grape. Plants possibly used for medicinal purposes were also recovered including sumac, bedstraw, pokeweed, smartweed, and vervain. 

In addition to this occupation, debris associated with the occupation of the site as the Kenyon-Remington store and as a Late Archaic camp were also recovered. The material from the site is curated in the Anthropology Collections of the New York State Museum. 

Project Manager