[Louis A. Brennan et al. (1962)] We can, after over two years of digging at this location, assert with considerable conviction that pottery is associated here with little shell only, never with medium to big shell, and there are at least two soil building periods at Kettle Rock Point older than the Vinette Ilike pottery. If, as has been postulated, Vinette I is the primary ware in the northeastern states, and if our Kettle Rock pottery, which is descriptively Vinette I, is in fact Vinette I, then we can fix the date of our Kettle Rock middens by the occurrence of the little shell. From a study of ecological clues to dating, published in American Antiquity, July, 1958, under the title of "Ecological Interpretations in Archaeology," (Clement Meighan and others) we quote the following "Shell fish are also good indicators of general climatic conditions, reflecting changes in ocean temperatures quite precisely.
" What the occurrence at Kettle Rock of Vinetta I-like pottery in dumps of little shell requires us to think is that these heaps were laid down during a relatively cool period, since the much larger shell of earlier middens show us that there had been in this sequence periods much more favorable to oyster growth, and hence much warmer. But the little oysters occur in the latest middens, with bigger oysters under them, not above them, and we must therefore assume that the climate was trending cool.