Sandy Hill: A Preliminary Reanalysis

Summary

The Sandy Hill Site (72-97) was dug on the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation over the course of several years as part of large-scale, multi-phase cultural resource management (CRM) excavations. The site, which dates to the Early Archaic, produced a dense assemblage of quartz lithic artifacts, as well as thousands of charred botanicals and calcined bone fragments. Very few bifacial tools were recovered, which has led to the argument that this site may represent a southern manifestation of the Gulf of Maine tradition. Sandy Hill also contained a series of large, overlapping features that have been interpreted as successive house floors, making this the first and only Early Archaic site in Connecticut to have extensive evidence of possible domestic occupation. In this paper I will conduct a preliminary re-analysis of Sandy Hill, with special attention to the aspects of the site that have yet to be addressed in the archaeological literature.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Exploring 12,000 Years of Occupation, Land Use, and Conflict: Archaeological and Historical Research Sponsored by the Mashantucket and Eastern Pequot Tribes

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