I'll call the meeting to order.

This is the meeting of the Bourne Conservation Commission scheduled for May 7, 2026.

I'll dispense with my normal thing because we have a presentation.

I'll go over that at the end of the presentation for those who have matters before the board.

But tonight we're welcoming members of the Planning Board Historic Commission and the Housing Partnership and Trust, as well as members of the Herring Pond Wampanoag tribe.

And we're here for a presentation by John Steinberg, an archaeologist with the FIFT Center at UMass Boston, and he is going to present the information that he developed through his research in investigation at Burying Hill in Bourndale.

And I assume the majority of the folks that are here are here for that presentation.

So with that said, we'll welcome John to the front, and he can open things up.

We can see that better.

I'm just going to stand here and turn my back to you guys if that's all right.

Or you can stand back there.

Like five wires, just don't worry about it.

I'll be careful with the wire.

So I'd like to, I'm going to tell you a little bit about our research at Burring Hill.

This took, this began more than a year ago.

Can I have the next slide?

Since we're in charge of that.

I am going to describe the methods and the results.

And I will, but I'm going to try and avoid, I've already given a presentation to the Bering Pond tribe folks, where I've showed them specific locations of burials, how the burials interact with each other, and they've come up to the hill where we flag the locations of burials.

So unfortunately, I can't share that information.

It's actually sort of illegal in the state of Massachusetts to share that information.

But I am going to give you enough that you're going to appreciate what we've done and how we've done that.

I am going to show you drawings of Native American burials, and I'm going to show you photographs of skeletons of Viking Age Iceland, because what we do in Viking Age Iceland is exactly what we've done here, but without the excavation.

So if anybody's going to be offended, but I'll give you another warning when I'm about to show the drawings and the photographs of skeletons.

If anybody's worried about that.

Can I have the next slide, please?

The idea was to determine if burials extended all the way down to the southwest portion of 829 Cenic Highway.

And in that process, we were going to try and determine the number and distribution of burials on the hill.

As well as if we could see if there was any evidence of the meeting house.

Can I have the next slide?

So the Herring Pond area.

This is a map from 1825, superimposed on an air photo, so you see the canal, but you see how the Herring Pond River used to flow before the canal.

And so we're going to talk about the area right down below.

And this is one of the.

Excuse me.

Could you stand over there to see?

No, we can all see the one.

This is a real geological specialty is unmarked burials in glacial environments.

I know that sounds pretty specific, but this turns out to be exactly what you've got.

Can I have the next slide, please?

Bourndale specifically is at the point of a giant tumoranges.

So it's essentially two lobes of the Lurtyne ice sheet that have stopped and moved back and forth a little bit and then melted.

And this leaves one of the more interesting geological environments.

Can I have the next slide, please?

Where you have a series of kettle ponds, canes, drumlins, and outwash planes.

And you'll see this all because when we do ground penetrating radar, these are the kind of deposits that we see.

So you see the little see the little dots?

Those are really important.

So those are canes.

And many of the burial grounds are put on canes because they're really easy to dig in because they're all sandy.

And they drain well.

Can I now?

Sorry.

So the idea is, and you'll see this exact thing that the canes are little piles of earth that were deposited by the glaciers, and then at the same time there's little absences of Earth that go way deep, and those are called kettles.

And so you see both in the same environment, both kettles and canes.

Can I have the next one?

And so that's what these are.

All of these little hills dotting the area between the real beginning of the moraine at Herring Pond, are all of these little things.

And right down at the bottom in little blue is the lot in question.

Can I have the next slide, please?