So Many Pits, So Little Analysis: A Methodology for Interpreting Feature Function from Legacy Field Notes in the Minisink National Historic Landmark

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Generally identified through differences in soil color, texture, and composition, subterranean pit features are ubiquitous across archaeological sites in the Eastern Woodlands. Despite this ubiquity, most archaeologists have not attempted to statistically analyze features to understand their function in Indigenous foodways. Rather, published interpretations of function are most often based on interpretations made during excavations, which are themselves based on established interpretations for the geographic region the archaeologist studies. In this paper, I present a more rigorous method to interpret how archaeological features were used by Indigenous people based on archival field records from past excavations. My interpretations are based on my statistical analysis of 861 pit features excavated within the Minisink National Historic Landmark combined with ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts of Lenape subterranean feature usage. I present a methodological framework for interpreting feature function that I argue can and should be adapted across the Eastern Woodlands to improve our understanding of why Indigenous people were constructing these pit features and how they used them. Additionally, I will discuss the problems that can come from using archival archaeological records but also the benefits of employing such large data sets.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53803