NYSAA Bulletin No. 52 — Archaic Sites: Croton Point & Dogan Point — Passage 3 (part 9)

[Various (1971)] As I have long and frequently stated, I regard the Laurentian tradition of the Late Archaic stage as having its immediate source in the Lake Forest belt lying adjacent on the south to the Great Lakes and extending eastward across lower Canada, with major centers in the Ottawa and St. Lawrence valleys, into the Canadian Maritimes and upper New England (Ritchie 1965a: 79-83). The Laurentian seems to have coexisted with the Shield Archaic to the north, with a zone of interaction overlapping the two provinces (Wright n.d.), and with the Maritime Archaic on the east, which is only now becoming known, chiefly 4 THE BULLETIN through the recent researches of Tuck at Port au Choix (Tuck 1970). The Laurentian diffused southward from the St.

Lawrence region into New England and New York, through primary routes which included the Richelieu River-Lake Champlain and Hudson Valley on the east, and the Oswego-Seneca and Oneida rivers in central New York. South of the areas adjacent to these waterways, evidence of Laurentian cultures becomes progressively weaker in southern New York and southern New England. In these areas, I believe, a completely different tradition, characterized by narrow-bladed projectile points, was predominant, coexisting in large part with the Laurentian on the north. Again, as in the case of the Laurentian and Shield Archaic of Canada, there was a considerable overlapping zone of interaction.