William A. Ritchie

The Eastern Dispersal of Adena

In the upper Ohio Valley, Adena mounds and their burials are less complex than, but essentially similar to, those of the major Adena centers of Ohio and Kentucky. Chronologically, they belong in the middle and late Adena periods. Two Adena sites much farther east have been found on Chesapeake Bay; they are closer in trait inventories and in radiocarbon dates to upper Ohio Valley sites than to Adena sites farther west. A reappraisal of evidence from the Northeast, particularly the Middlesex focus of New York, strongly suggests the movement of Adena people as far as the St. Lawrence River, although the proportion of Adena traits diminishes as distance from the Ohio Valley increases. Still another Adena dispersal, probably contemporaneous with this one, has previously been postulated to account for the Copena complex of Tennessee and Alabama. The cause of these rapid and far-reaching movements was probably the arrival or growth of Hopewell people in Illinois and Indiana and

A Perspective of Northeastern Archaeology

ARBITRARILY considered, the Northeastern geographical area embraces the Maritime Provinces of Canada, lower Quebec and Ontario (exclusive of the peninsula), and all of New England, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Obviously such a large territory (some 485,000 square miles) constitutes neither a single physiographical nor cultural province, but in a general way it was the domain, in both historic and prehistoric times, of two far flung ethnic groups: the Algonkian and the Iroquoian. The archaeological background of the numerous Algonkian groups is virtually unknown; for the Iroquois, correlations have been well established between the prehistoric and historic occupations, through the intervening protohistoric period, owing to their recency and the relative abundance of documentary evidence.32 Two main causes serve to explain the deplorable lack of cultural data for the Algonkian tribes: rapid acculturation under European influence and the destruction of the principal aboriginal sites by intensive Caucasian settlement of the coastal plain and eastern river valleys. Much sporadic and some systematic field work over practically the whole Northeastern area during more than half a century has resulted in a large literature, but in few accounts of a general nature.33 While no archaeological culture in the entire Northeastern area is in any sense thoroughly understood, a few have been relatively well elucidated and will form the framework of this account. Research now in

Culture Influences from Ohio in New York Archaeology

In the course of its long and eventful prehistory, the territory embraced in the present state of New York was invaded from nearly every direction. For several groups, notably the Iroquois, it was the end of the trail; others sojourned briefly and passed on. In part it was heavily occupied by diverse bands for a considerable period of time. This is especially true of the central and southern sections and of large parts of the Genesee Valley. The latter and the Finger Lakes region, including the Seneca River, are thickly strewn with sites of varying age and size. In one section of the Genesee Valley, just south of Rochester, hardly a knoll is opened without revealing skeletons. Other relatively intensively occupied areas are the Susquehanna drainage, parts of the Mohawk and Hudson valleys and Long Island.

A Current Synthesis of New York Prehistory

INCE MY SYNTHESIS (Ritchie, 1944) additional chronological and other data (Smith, 1950; Bullen, 1949) have accumulated for the New York area from interrelated field (Ritchie, 1946; also excavations of 1950 on same site) and laboratory (Ritchie and MacNeish, 1949; MacNeish, n.d.) researches. Among the significant sites recently excavated by the writer, which have contributed to the problem of cultural continuity are the Jacks Reef site, to be further excavated and reported on in 1951; the East Sugar Island site (Ritchie, 1949, pp. 3-24); and a group of Owasco and early Mohawk sites in eastern New York, excavated in 1949-1950 (Ritchie, Lenig and Miller, n.d.; Ritchie, n.d.). The Piffard site in western New York, excavated by Robert R. Hill of Rochester, N.Y., is another site showing transitional features. The chronological data accrue from the radiocarbon analyses of Arnold and Libby (1950, p. 7) made from charcoal samples obtained from hearths and graves on certain Archaic and early Woodland period sites in central New York. The Archaic I period (Fig. 54) was represented by the lower component (Lamoka Lake 1) at the Lamoka Lake site, Schuyler County (Ritchie, 1932), which was dated at 5383 250 years of elapsed time. Charcoal obtained in the writers excavations of 192526 was not submitted. The samples used (288, 367) were excavated by A. Frank Barrott of Elmira, N. Y., at the request of the writer, from an adjoining portion of the site corresponding in all respects to the earlier explored area. Since sample 288 was found to be root contaminated the dating was based upon sample 367. At Frontenac Island, Cayuga County, the particular hearth (Ritchie, 1945, Pl. 15; cf. pp. 6-7, 57) yielding the charcoal used in the analysis (sample 191) directly overlay and partly destroyed what appeared to have been an extended burial, a Laurentian characteristic, suggesting that both features may pertain to the early Lamoka-Laurentian contact

The Antiquity of Pottery in the Northeast

Radiocarbon dates indicate the beginning of fibertempered pottery in Georgia and Florida around 2000 B.C. In discussing the relative antiquity of ceramics in the Southeast and Northeast, Bullen rejects a radiocarbon date of 2448 B.C. for Vinette 1 pottery from the Hunter site, New York, because of dubious association of pottery and burial complex. The association is shown to be secure, but a new gas-method radiocarbon date of 841 B.C. for the same sample, removes the difficulty, and establishes an approximate age of 1000 B.C. for the earliest known Northeastern ceramics. IN A RECENT ARTICLE in this journal, Bullen (1961: 104-6) has presented a group of radiocarbon dates for Georgia and Florida sites in support of his postulation that the fiber-tempered pottery horizon began, probably as the result of an independent invention in the Georgia -Florida area, about 2000 B.c., and constituted the first known appearance of pottery in the New World, north of Mexico. Discussing the earliest heretofore published date for pottery in the Northeast, Bullen questions the validity of the association on which it was based, rather than the date itself, but a new date for the same sample reveals an alternative source for the difficulty, and supports Bullens evidence for the priority of Southeastern