PLYMOUTH -- In 2016, they found evidence of the palisade walls of the Pilgrims’ first settlement.



And now, nearly 400 years after the Mayflower passengers landed in Plymouth, archaeologists from UMass-Boston have located remains of Pilgrim homes.



This summer, a group working with David Landon, director of the university’s Fiske Center for Archaeological Research, unearthed artifacts that date to the early 17th century.



Landon and his students have been digging extensively along the edges of Burial Hill, working their way south along the western border of School Street, since 2013. Their work this summer focused on an area just north of the First Parish Church.



“We’re probably looking at the period 1620 to 1650 or so,” Landon said last week when he gave his annual update on the digs at the Pilgrim Hall Museum.



Last year, the archaeological team found the remains of a calf while digging near an old burial vault near the church at the base of Burial Hill. The vault, built in the 1830s, has not been used in years.



Research in the laboratory revealed that the calf did not die of disease or animal attack. Rather, it was extensively butchered, and the remains were buried beside a house as waste.



Landon theorized that the butchering was done in the dog days of summer, when it was too hot for anyone to bother processing all of the animal. The meaty hind legs were removed, and cut marks on the skeleton suggest that the rest of the body was thoroughly cleaned of meat, but the bones were not saved.



The area in front of the vault contained a wealth of 17th-century artifacts. Landon said European pottery, stoneware, straight pins and trader’s beads were mixed with native pottery, suggesting that the Pilgrims used what was available because European goods were limited.



The area probably contained so many artifacts because material was relocated when the vault was built nearly two centuries ago.



This year’s dig ended with the start of excavation behind the vault. There, on the last day of digging for the year, Landon and his students found a lead seal that probably was used to identify a bolt of cloth.



Landon said the seal was about the size of a quarter and was decorated with a thistle, suggesting that it was made in England.







