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

Figure 13.3. Wood charcoal from archaeological sites arranged by site/component, from oldest to youngest (left
to right) within each group. Time interval is about 6000–225 BP for Maine sites, 4500–500 BP for New York upland
sites, 5600–850 BP for New York bottomland sites, 6000–650 BP for the Memorial Park site in Pennsylvania, and
3500–300 BP for the Connecticut and adjacent New York sites.
In Maine, where there was no hickory charcoal
identified, there appears to be little correlation
between percentage of oak trees and frequency of
nutshell, in part because there is scarcely any nutshell
recovered from sites dating prior to two thousand
years ago.
Maize and Seeds
In many parts of the Northeast, the archaeological
data suggest a direct correlation between adoption of
maize agriculture and an increase in the ratio of seeds
per gram of total charcoal (Figure 13.5). This correlation
is found at the Memorial Park site in
Pennsylvania, at several Maine sites, and perhaps at
the Connecticut and southeastern New York sites. At
the Memorial Park site, numerous seeds of native cultivated
plants were found in association with maize,
but at the Connecticut, New York, and Maine sites
none of the seeds were domesticates.
At sites 294A-AF2-1 and 294A-25-2, located in the
oak-chestnut zone in Connecticut, there was an
increase in seed density associated with maize agriculture,
but the increases were relatively small. At site 211-
1-1 in eastern New York, also in the oak-chestnut forest
zone, seed densities associated with maize were quite
high, but there were no pre-maize components for
comparison. The density of maize at these three sites
was very low–far less than one fragment per gram of
charcoal. At all other New York sites included in this
study, except Broome Tech, the correlation between
maize agriculture and seed density is less clear,
because the overall maize and seed densities are low.
In Maine, the cultivation of maize started by 570 B.P.
248 Sidell