Lithic Variation and Tool Technology at the East Pasture Site, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts

Summary

In 2003 the Public Archaeology Laboratory, Inc. (PAL) completed survey and data recovery excavations at the East Pasture Site, located immediately east of Menemsha Pond on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. The investigations revealed a multi-component site dating from the Early Archaic to Late Woodland/Contact Period, and recovered a total of 19,679 artifacts and 24 cultural features. The artifact assemblage was dominated (99%) by lithics, including debitage, projectile points, groundstone tools, raw materials, utilized flakes, cores, performs, unifaces, scrapers, choppers, blades, drills, and others. Of the total diagnostic projectile points, 71% were which William Ritchie defined as Late Archaic Squibnocket Stemmed in 1969. The contexts in which the points were recovered at East Pasture suggest a temporal association to the Late Archaic through Woodland Periods, which challenges the traditional association between Small-Squibnocket Stemmed projectiles and the Woodland Period on the Vineyard. This paper details the results of the investigations with emphasis on the recovered lithics and Archaic Period occupation.

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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