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

prehistoric origins for sedentism and defensible locations
in northern New England, dating well before
European contact, as seen at the Early Fall site.
Technological Data
Technological data also support the idea that a fundamental
transformation occurred during the Late
Woodland period before A.D. 1300 across much of the
Northeast. To begin this brief review, ceramic and perishable
fiber artifacts provide evidence of both continuity
and change between the Middle and Late
Woodland periods. We have presented considerable
details about Middle and Late Woodland ceramics and
fiber perishables elsewhere. To summarize, locally distinctive
ceramic styles first became widespread during
the Late Woodland period and there are local differences
across most of the region well before European
contact (e.g., Chilton 1998; Cowie and Petersen 1999;
Goodby 1998; Lavin 1998; Petersen 1990; Petersen and
Sanger 1991; Petersen and Toney 2000). In general, late
northeastern ceramic styles commonly shared thin vessel
walls, relatively small vessel size in most cases
(except among unequivocal Iroquoian examples), and
typically elaborate incised, punctate, and other zoned
decoration with and without collars.
We believe that these widely distributed ceramics
show crystallization of Native ethnicity well before the
Contact period during the Late Woodland period,
clearly by ca. A.D. 1300. These changes are quite likely
a consequence of horticulture, social aggregation, and
increased sedentism. Social identity may have become
increasingly important in the context of these broad
transformations. We argue that late prehistoric farming
transformed local pottery styles or traditions less (or
not at all?) for “functional” reasons, as Braun (1987)
and others have argued, but instead, primarily because
of sociopolitical factors related to social signaling and
identity.
Fiber perishables, or “textiles,” are typically very
incomplete for any one specimen and are so rarely analyzed
that we know much less about them relative to
ceramics. Nonetheless, they are potentially important
because cordage twist and twining weft slant, among
other attributes, are normally population-specific, as
well established through many previous archaeological
and ethnographic analyses (e.g., Petersen 1996;
Petersen et al. 2001; Petersen and Wolford 2000). New
textile forms such as interlinking appeared during the
Late Woodland period, along with the continuation of
predominant twining forms (Petersen 1996; Petersen
and Sanger 1991). Although most often reconstructed
using impressions on pottery, Late Woodland textiles
show a continuation of regional differences between
coastal and noncoastal groups around the Gulf of
Maine in the U.S. and Canada, with continuity
between the Middle and Late Woodland periods. We
see the continuation of distinct coastal and noncoastal
New England patterns in other words. The noncoastal,
“interior” New England textile pattern also can be differentiated
from most, if not all Iroquoian textiles, as
well (Petersen 1996; Petersen and Wolford 2000). With
the exception of the Goddard site (the location of a presumed
warm season trade fair), strong patterning continued
to differentiate the New England coast and interior
during and after the Late Woodland period. In
other words, Z-twist and Z-weft slant differentiated
coastal and Iroquoian textiles from the S-twist and S-
weft slant of noncoastal New England textiles. In some
Late Woodland contexts, artifact evidence unequivocally
documents long-distance trade or direct transport
of ceramics made on the coast far into the interior, as on
the Connecticut, Androscoggin, and Penobscot Rivers,
among others, on the basis of pottery temper and associated
textile evidence. The co-occurrence of coastal
cordage twist and weft slant on shell-tempered pottery
at sites far away from the coast allows us to make this
inference at various interior sites, including, for example,
Skitchewaug on the Connecticut River.
ETHNOHISTORIC DATA ABOUT NATIVE
SUBSISTENCE AND SETTLEMENT
Ethnohistoric and archaeological information for the
Contact period in the Northeast, ca. A.D. 1550/1600-
1750, are important to the present discussion because
they provide a critical “endpoint” for the processes of
cultural evolution that we recognize during the preceding
Late Woodland period and likely earlier. Again,
we do not want to belabor this point, but we feel that
interpretation of this information is closely related to
interpretation of the prehistoric data, and disagreement
about the effects of European contact has led to
disagreement about the importance of prehistoric horticulture
in the Northeast.
Some critics will disagree about the nature of
Contact period subsistence and settlement across the
region as it is portrayed here, including northern New
England, suggesting that the early European explorers
and colonists inevitably misrepresented the Native
peoples they met. These scholars would suggest, for
example, that such misrepresentation includes records
for various coastal groups from the St. Lawrence River
280 Petersen and Cowie