Style Versus Occupation II: A Broader View of the Narrow Stemmed Tradition in Southern New England

Summary

Artifact types are often used as markers of social boundedness or "ethnicity" although the relationship between typology and culture remains a very complex and poorly understood issue. Projectile points from the Narrow-stemmed Tradition (also called the Small Stemmed Tradition) are ubiquitous in southern New England and can rarely be attributed to a single component Native American archaeological site. Attempts have been made to seriate this style of point with varying success, given its style is one that would have been expediently made from local quartz cobbles and convenient enough to transcend across millennia. Typically assigned to the Late Archaic period (ca. 6000 to 3000 B.P.), the style is often recovered along with components of the Early Woodland period (ca. 3000 to 2000 B.P.). This paper expands upon a poster presented in 2011on the analysis of Narrow Stemmed points from one site in eastern Connecticut. Recent excavations at the several other sites in eastern Connecticut and southeastern Massachusetts by PAL yielded large assemblages of Narrow-stemmed points, some in association with radiocarbon dated features, permitting an opportunity to compare and reassess the artifact typologies, cultural chronologies, and models of social organization southeastern New England.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Person, Place or Thing: Ongoing Questions and Evidence for New England Settlement and Material Culture   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16887