Using Debitage Analysis, MANA, and Landscape Utilization to Illuminate the Archaic-Early Woodland Transition in Western New York

Summary

Recent CRM fieldwork in western New York by SUNY Buffalo Archaeological Survey has afforded the opportunity to address questions of how people, technology, and the environment related from newly discovered sites which span thousands of years. One of the most fruitful avenues of research is in the examination of the transition from the Late and Transitional Archaic to the Early Woodland, a period in which it is suggested there was dramatic linked cultural and environmental change, where multiple competing groups gave way to the Meadowood, a culture centered on a vast network which spread trade goods, idosyncratic objects of great social significance, and a worldview which would unite people across the Northeast. This view is supported by lithic analysis, including in-depth debitage analysis which identifies idiosyncratic patterns for cache blade production between sites, Minimum Analytical Nodule Analysis (MANA) for raw material use, as well as correlations of landscape utilization between wetland/upland setting between time periods. The transition from the Archaic to Woodland time periods in archaeological literature, initially conceived of as a simple marker between aceramic and ceramic cultures, has proven prescient for reasons which more reflect the people behind these artifacts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21843