501 Boylston Street (lobby), entrance on Newbury Street, Back Bay, Boston
Excavations in the early 1900s revealed that, in constructing the Back Bay neighborhood, workers had unwittingly buried evidence of an indigenous community that utilized the bay for at least 1,500 years, beginning about 5,200 years ago, as a food source.
The construction of an extension of the Boylston subway station in 1913 led to the discovery of a dense collection of wooden stakes driven into the ground. Again in 1939, with excavations for the old New England Mutual Life Insurance Building (now “The Newbry”), thousands more stakes emerged. Archeologists believe that the stakes, woven together with brushwork, were effective fish weirs used to trap fish as the high tide receded. Evidence also exists in other sites in New England for v-shaped stone dams constricting river water flow to trap fish in a similar manner. These sites are the oldest surviving artifacts of pre-colonial civilizations in New England.
The fish weirs are brought to life in a diorama exhibited in the lobby of The Newbry, now a mixed-use building of office and retail space. (There are three additional dioramas, one of which shows the making of the Back Bay.) Since 2003, the Wampanoag Nation and local artists have hosted an annual commemorative service that reconstructs the weirs on Boston Common.
Getting there:
Green Line to Copley Station. 0.2 mile (five-minute) walk. The dioramas can only be accessed through the building’s Newbury Street entrance.
To learn more:
Décima, Elena B. and Dena F. Dincauze. “The Boston Back Bay Fish Weirs,” in Kathryn Bernick (Ed.), Hidden Dimensions: The Cultural Significance of Wetland Archaeology. Ed. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2008: 157-172.
Image: Diorama in the Newbry’s lobby. Photo by Eleni Macrakis.