Changes along a Native Transportation Corridor in Western Massachusetts: The Fife Brook Sites and the Deerfield River

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Changes in the Land: Archaeological Data from the Northeast" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

A cluster of Native American sites was first identified in the early 1970s at the junction of Fife Brook and the Deerfield River in western Massachusetts, and was further examined 15 years ago. Recent additional work has expanded knowledge of site distribution on this portion of the Deerfield and added to the inventory of material culture from sites near Fife Brook. The sites in this cluster range from the Late Archaic to the Woodland Period, and include intact features, fire-cracked rock, lithic tools, and pottery. This paper presents the new data gathered in 2018 in comparison to other known sites along the Deerfield, including the nearby cluster of sites at the junction of the Deerfield with the Cold River. The Fife Brook sites were located along a major transportation corridor between both New York State and southern Vermont and the Connecticut River, which was used for many millennia following glacial retreat. The Fife Brook sites and those along the wider Deerfield River are examined to look at how Native material culture has changed over the past thousands of years.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Changes in the Land: Archaeological Data from the Northeast

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25796