NYSAA Bulletin No. 52 — Archaic Sites: Croton Point & Dogan Point — Passage 3 (part 6)

[Various (1971)] ± 250 years (M-1908), and a chipped celt with ground bit, having no parallels in the south_________________ 1 Published by permission of the Director, New York State Museum and Science Service, Journal Series No. 129. No. 52, July 1971 3 eastern Early Archaic lay still deeper in a horizon dated to 6920 B.C. ± 320 years (M-1909) (Michels and Smith 1967: 863). In New York State, I have called attention to the rare and random occurrence of several forms of the bifurcated base point (Ritchie 1961: 9, 115), some of them now identifiable as LeCroy Bifurcated Base (Plate 34, figs. 1-3, 6) and Kanawha Stemmed (Ibid., fig. 5). Figures 7-9 on the same plate resemble untyped specimens found on the Staten Island sites.

It seems certain that upstate New York was infrequently visited by little bands of hunters from the south, who may have made brief seasonal incursions through the Hudson, Susquehanna and other major river valleys. I have long suspected an unfavorable environmental milieu as the primary cause of our failure to find more than the slenderest evidence of Late Paleo-Indian and Early Archaic man in the Northeast, or from c. 7000 to 4000 B.C. The pollen spectra and other evidence suggest that around 7000 B.C. the forest composition was undergoing a marked alteration from spruce-pine to pine dominance, with a significantly lowered carrying capacity for game.