Coastal Continuity on the Wampanoag Landscape: Recent Analyses of the Woodland Period Occupation at the Cole’s Hill Archaeological Site (19-PL-984) in Plymouth, Massachusetts

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological excavations in 2021 recovered important new information about the Coles Hill Archaeological Site (19-PL-984), a Wampanoag site overlooking the waterfront in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Despite the location on a heavily developed urban lot, a preserved portion of the site featured intact stratigraphy yielding in situ cultural features, pottery sherds, a wide array of local and exotic lithic materials including diagnostic lithic artifacts, evidence of local shellfish resource exploitation, and macrobotanical remains recovered from secure feature contexts and appropriate for radiocarbon dating. Subsequent AMS radiocarbon dating revealed that the site was occupied from as early as 394 BC (2,344 BP) and up to at least 1457 AD (493 BP). With evidence revealing a Jack’s Reef component, the earliest directly dated macrobotanical maize specimen in the region, and 17th-century European material culture recovered from the area's buried A horizon, this coastal site documents almost 2,000 years of vibrant indigenous life before and up to the eve of European contact. This paper presents the current analyses and interpretations of this site, and discusses the invaluable opportunity Cole’s Hill offers to further bring to the fore the role and lifeways of Indigenous peoples in the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36969.0