Early to Late Archaic Cultural Traditions in Southeast Massachusetts

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.

The Gulf of Maine Archaic Tradition is poorly represented in Southeastern Massachusetts. Following recent excavations in Somerset, hundreds, if not thousands of pieces of quartz chipping debris, cores, and expedient edge tools were recovered from a relatively small area of distribution. This large amount of non-diagnostic quartz debitage strongly indicates the presence of this Early Archaic tradition. In addition, a separate locus containing a Late Archaic component, yielded mainly Brewerton projectile points, and clearly modified tools and scrapers. Several other materials were represented in this locus including quartzites and rhyolites, but the presence of quartz drops significantly. This paper will discuss how these two loci fit into our understanding of the indigenous cultural history of Southeastern Massachusetts.

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): 25495