Northeast Subsistence-Settlement Change: A.D. 700 –1300

PREFACE
The New York State Museum has a long history of
publishing important works on the archaeology of
New York. William M. Beauchamp, Arthur C. Parker,
William A. Ritchie, and Robert E. Funk all published
classic monographs through the Museum that helped
to define the archaeology of their times. Continuing
with this tradition, the Museum has begun a series of
edited volumes in its Bulletin series that present
important new research results on the archaeology of
New York and the greater Northeast. The first,
Current Northeast Paleoethnobotany (Bulletin 494), is a
collection of papers that highlights the importance of
botanical remains in the interpretation of prehistoric
subsistence in the Northeast. It was followed by
Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Domestic Site
Archaeology in New York State (Bulletin 495), a collection
of papers that highlights the importance of
archaeology in the understanding of our relatively
recent history.
This third volume, Northeast Subsistence-Settlement
Change: A.D. 700-1300 (Bulletin 496) brings together a
collection of papers that presents the results of recent
research on early Late Prehistoric period (A.D.
700–1300) subsistence and settlement. The volume
developed from a symposium I organized with coeditor
Christina Rieth for the New York Natural History
Conference VI, which was held at the New York State
Museum in April 2000. Our goal for the symposium
was to bring together regional experts in the early
Late Prehistoric period to describe the scope of
research being done on subsistence and settlement
issues across the broader Northeast. Eighteen papers
were presented, covering the region from the western
end of Lake Erie through southern Ontario,
Pennsylvania, New York, New England, and New
Brunswick.
The symposium was very well received, and we
thought it would work well as an edited book. As
such things go, not all of the symposium participants
were able to prepare their papers for publication, and
some had made commitments to publish elsewhere,
but we were able to assemble a collection of 18 chapters
that covers a broad geographical region and a diversity
of topics concerned with subsistence and settlement
during a 600-year period of prehistory. With the help
of the volume contributors, we were able to bring the
book to publication in the relatively short period of
two years.
The early Late Prehistoric period is an important
time in Northeastern prehistory because it was then
that many of the subsistence and settlement traits of
Native populations recorded during the early Historic
period first become evident in the archeological
record. The chapters in this book provide regional
summaries, analyses of specific sites and site categories,
analyses of pottery and paleoethnobotanical
data, and models for the adoption of maize-based
agriculture. While it would have been possible to
organize the chapters on topical grounds, we felt that
a geographical organization would provide a better
sense of the range of variation in subsistence and settlement
traits across the region. We also thought that
such an organization would provide a sense for current
controversies in the various subregions covered
by the book. To those ends, the chapters are organized
in a transect from west-to-east and south-to-north,
sandwiched between an introduction by Christina
Rieth and a concluding chapter by me and Bernard
Means. We hope that this book will not only provide a
sense of current research on the early Late Prehistoric
period in the Northeast, but will spur additional
research on this critical period of time.
As this book goes to press, additional volumes are in
production in the Bulletin series that will highlight
other important topics in New York and Northeast
archaeology. Geoarchaeology of Landscapes in the Glacial
Northeast (Bulletin 497) will bring together papers that
highlight current geoarchaeological research in the
Northeast. The collected papers in The Archaeology of
Albany will present the results of recent archaeological
investigations in Albany, New York, one of the oldest
continually occupied Euroamerican settlements in the
United States. Other topical volumes will follow in
subsequent years.
Preface
xiii