Undiscovered Country: Preliminary Results of Eleven New Sites Identified in the Susquetonscut Brook Valley, Eastern Connecticut, USA

Summary

PAL, Inc (the Public Archaeology Laboratory) conducted archaeological investigations in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island in preparation for upcoming modifications to an existing pipeline. The project in particular crossed large areas of Eastern, Central and Western Connecticut that have not previously been systematically surveyed. This paper will focus on those sites identified in Eastern Connecticut, specifically those found along the Susquetonscut Brook, a tributary of the Yantic River. Diagnostic artifacts coupled with 14C dates of 3901 ± 23 RCYBP (PRI-14-065-2820.02-04) and 4026 ± 23 RCYBP (PRI-14-065-2820.02-05) place these sites within the Late/Transitional Archaic Period to the Early Woodland Period. Considering the paucity of previously recorded sites in the Susquetonscut Brook’s Valley, these sites offer a wealth of new information for the region. In this paper we focus on specific questions about these sites: 1) What activities took place at each site, what local resources were exploited, and how do these factors relate to site use and seasonality?; 2) Are the sites along Susquetonscut Brook related?; and 3) why are were no earlier or later sites found despite extensive survey coverage?

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Research on the Archaic Period in the Northeast: The Past 20 Years   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage