A 1630s English Wigwam in Hingham?

A discovery unearthed in downtown Hingham, as important as any found in years along the Massachusetts shoreline, will be the theme of the 2012 Spring Dinner and lecture on Wednesday, March 14.

The event will be held at the Society’s home, Old Derby Academy, 34 Main Street.

The guest speaker will be Tim Barker of University of Massachusetts Archaeological Services, which conducted excavations near Hingham Square in 2004 before work began on the underpass that is part of the restoration of the MBTA’s Greenbush commuter rail line.

Barker will recount how his 15-person team uncovered evidence of perhaps the earliest dwellings on the site, dating to the 1630s, and retrieved artifacts of the same period: among them pieces of English flint that could be made into tools, a spoon handle, a delicate bottle shard, a clay pipe stem fragment, and wooden discs possibly used as tankard bottoms. All were buried beneath five feet of fill used as the base for construction of the original Old Colony Railroad in 1844.

The findings, said Barker, are “very important because of their remarkable preservation.” The fill “essentially sealed them” and kept them from deterioration. What’s more, he said, “I’m certain that there are still undisturbed resources” to be found in the vicinity, because the streamside terrace along the original Town Brook and its bordering wetland had been an attractive site for human settlement for hundreds of years [prior to English settlement. The brook was diverted to facilitate the Greenbush line.

The site, along the railroad right-of-way between North and South streets, was required by law to undergo an archaeological review to inventory -- and avoid damage to -- anything of historical value. Otherwise, as Barker puts it, “One swipe of the bulldozer blade and they’re gone forever.”

UMass Archaeological Services is a contract, grant-funded organization. A unit of the Department of Anthropology on the university’s Amherst campus, it has worked with the National Park Service, the Massachusetts Department of Highways, the Department of Environmental Management, and other state and federal agencies as well as towns, schools, energy companies, and utilities. It conducts dozens of surveys a year.

“We’re delighted to offer this opportunity to learn about the exciting and unexpected discoveries made by the archaeological teams that explored the ancient dirt beneath North Street in the months before construction began on the Greenbush,” said HHS director Suzanne Buchanan. “The ‘MBTA digs,’ as they were called, give us one of the best glimpses of life in Hingham in the first decades of settlement after 1633.”

The dinner/lecture is open to all. Tickets are $28 per person and reservations may be made by March 12 at (784) 749-7721.

Parking is available on street as well as behind opposite Old Derby Academy. Doors will open at 6 p.m.

After a half hour of byob socializing, dinner will be served at 6:30 p.m. The lecture is scheduled to begin at 7:15.

- Hingham Historical Society