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

Herbaceous and shrubby vegetation increases at
the camp margins, giving way to general disclimax
forest which provides firewood. Winter
trapping camps are in more protected locations.
[Yarnell 1984:108]
Crawford (1997) used weed seeds as an indicator of
anthropogenesis in prehistoric northeastern Japan. He
pointed out that anthropogenesis is a critical factor in
the success of human cultures. By removing trees
from a habitat, humans set in motion processes that
change the character of the ecosystem, taking the system
back to less mature successional stages. Young
successional stages are characterized by rapid reproductive
rates, short life cycles, and a high ratio of production
to respiration, resulting in greater quantities
of fruit and vegetal materials, as well as greater numbers
of animals, such as deer and rodents (Crawford
1997:87). Crawford identified patterns involving relative
abundance of annual weeds (indicative of regular
short-term disturbance) and perennial weeds (indicative
of early successional stages that would be associated
with forest edge or village edge communities).
Quantitative analysis of archaeological plant
remains makes it possible to draw inferences about
the degree of anthropogenic disturbance of plant
communities in the vicinity of a site through time.
This paper will use a variety of indicators to trace
changes in plant assemblages in the Northeast from
the Archaic through the Contact periods. This
approach is essential to understanding the particular
changes in plant communities that are associated with
the adoption of agriculture and may make it possible
to recognize occupations that represent early experimentation
with agriculture, as hypothesized by John
Hart (1999) in his Darwinian perspective on the evolution
of maize agriculture in the Eastern Woodlands.
To recognize evidence of anthropogenesis, it is first
necessary to consider what the undisturbed vegetation
of northeastern sites would have been like and
how it may have differed from south to north.
FOREST REGIONS OF THE NORTHEAST
A comprehensive account of the original forest pattern
of eastern North America was constructed by
Lucy Braun in 1950. According to her model, much of
northern New England and New York State at settlement
was covered with a hemlock–white
pine–northern hardwoods forest (Figure 13.1).
Northward, the shorter growing season and low winter
temperature extremes eliminated one after another
of the deciduous forest species. Maine archaeological
sites fall within the New England section and most
of the New York sites lie within the Allegheny section
of the hemlock–white pine–northern hardwoods forest
(Figure 13.2). In New York, the chestnuts, oaks,
and hickories of the southern forests extended up the
major river valleys into the state (Braun 1950:395).
Many of the New York sites in the present study are
located in the Susquehanna drainage, some in the valleys
and some in the uplands. The Memorial Park site
in the Susquehanna River Valley in Pennsylvania is at
the edge of Braun’s oak–chestnut forest region, which
extends up into southern New England and the
Hudson River Valley in New York. The present study
includes three sites from the oak–chestnut forest
region in Connecticut and adjacent New York State.
Latitudinal differences in the number of tree
species are significant in the case of those with edible
nuts, particularly oaks and hickories. In Maine there
are only three species of nut trees that are widespread—red
oak, beech, and beaked hazelnut—out of
a total of 14 species of nut trees found in the state (see
maps in Asch Sidell 1999d:196). In New York, this
increases to seven widespread species, and in
Pennsylvania, eight (Table 13.1). In southern New
England, there are 15 species of nut trees that are
widespread (Little 1971, 1977).
INDICATOR SPECIES
Keeping in mind that tree species occur in different
combinations in different regions and that the ecological
significance of a species may vary between
regions (Braun 1950:37), the archaeological wood
species can be grouped to form indicators of several
plant communities or habitats. For Northeastern sites,
some communities that can be inferred from archaeological
wood are mesic forest; dry, open woods; disturbed
woods or thickets; and bottomland forest
(Table 13.2).
The first group of species, labeled “mesic forest,” is
indicative of a mature northern hardwoods–hemlock–white
pine forest. Sugar maple,
beech, and hemlock were important components of
that forest (Braun 1950). These species grow in rich
soil, are shade tolerant, and thrive in a closed forest
with moderate moisture. Yellow birch (Betula
alleghaniensis) and sweet birch (B. lenta) are also shade
tolerant and common in rich soil of moist woods and
slopes (House 1924:270). White pine formerly was a
242 Sidell