Newton Site (18MO274)

The Newton site (18MO274) was a prehistoric short-term resource procurement camp, probably focused on the reduction of quartz cobbles and pebbles. It was located in a house yard on Route 29 in Burtonsville, near the Montgomery County border. It lay within the Little Paint Branch drainage.

The site was discovered in 1986 during a Phase I survey for a proposed expansion of the Route 29 corridor in Howard and Montgomery counties. A large, tilled garden was surface collected, and a small amount of stone tools and debitage was recovered.

In 1988, a Phase II investigation was conducted at 18MO274. The garden was surface collected again. Twenty shovel test pits and three test units were then excavated. Most artifacts were recovered from plowzone, although a few were found in the upper 10 cm. of subsoil. Nearly all were quartz. They included biface fragments and flake tools, but none were temporally diagnostic. No cultural features were noted. Because of the limited data potential of the site, no further work was done there.

(Written by Ed Chaney)