EARLY WAREHOUSING AT LUMS POND

In the central part of the Lums Pond site lay a group of pit features that were tightly clustered together. Most of the pits had been used by the early inhabitants of the site as places to store goods for later use -- like a mini-warehouse today. The original contents of the pits were no longer present, but we can surmise that seeds, nuts, dried tubers, oils and other foodstuffs, may have been kept there, as well as things like skins or other materials collected in greater quantity than could be used immediately.

The pits were large and deep -- some of them were so large that the archaeologists had to climb into them to remove all of the dirt. Almost all of the pits had been dug down to the very old, coarse sandy soil layers that are under the site. The archaeologists believe that the pits were dug this deep to promote drainage. It would have been difficult to completely seal the pits from rainwater, and so they were dug into the sand to allow any water to drain through quickly.