Almost 13,000 years ago, small groups of Paleoindians endured frigid winters on the edge of a river in what would become Keene, New Hampshire. This begins the remarkable story of Native Americans in the Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire described in the new book A Deep Presence: 13,000 Years of Native American History.  Click here for a 68-minute video of his December 11, 2021 presentation.

Robert Goodby, Professor of Anthropology at Franklin Pierce University, earned his PhD in anthropology from Brown University and has over thirty years of experience excavating Native American archaeological sites in New England. He presented the story of his book to an audience at the Robbins Museum of Archaeology and Ethonology in Middleboro, MA.

From the Tenant Swamp Site in Keene, with the remains of the oldest known dwellings in New England, to the 4,000-year-old Swanzey Fish Dam still visible in the Ashuelot River, A Deep Presence tells their story in a narrative fashion, drawing on the author’s thirty years of fieldwork and presenting compelling evidence from archaeology, written history, and the living traditions of today’s Abenaki people.

Typically neglected or denied by conventional history, the long presence of Native people in southwestern New Hampshire is revealed by archaeological evidence for their deep, enduring connections to the land and the complex social worlds they inhabited.