Barkhamsted Lighthouse Village Grind Stone

Residents of the Lighthouse community were largely self-sufficient in subsistence. Bone fragments found in their fireplaces show that they ate deer and small wild game, and gun flints used in flint-lock rifles and other gun parts recovered at the site show that they used firearms to hunt. Archaeologists also found bones of domesticated animals, including cow, showing that these too were part of the inhabitants’ diet. They also farmed the land: early nineteenth-century land records identify a narrow island across East River Road as “James Chaugham’s plow land,” and other documents refer to a plot in the village itself as “Molly Chaugham’s garden.” Although exactly what they grew there is unknown, it is likely that corn was grown by the villagers and meal was produced on this grind stone, which was used to grind seeds or dried corn kernels on its flat, worn-down surface through thousands of hours of work with a hand-held stone, or “mano.”

Barkhamsted, Connecticut · United States