NYSAA Bulletin No. 52 — Archaic Sites: Croton Point & Dogan Point — Passage 3 (part 16)

[Various (1971)] It therefore appears that the Lamoka was the 6 THE BULLETIN earliest known culture of the narrow point tradition to enter New York and that its route into the south-central region was at that time relatively unobstructed by Laurentian groups probably resident farther north and in the eastern part of the state. The economy of the Lamoka people was based upon fishing, hunting, and heavily on the use of acorns, which were stored in fairly large pits, roasted in large beds of ashes, and processed into meal on an assortment of stone and perhaps wooden grinding implements (Ritchie 1965a: 48-62). The Laurentian economy depended primarily on hunting, less on fishing, and very little on gathering of nuts and seeds, if we are correctly evaluating the artifactual remains and food debris (Ritchie 1965a: 91-96). As I interpret the evidence, a zone of territorial overlapping of the Lamoka culture, centered to the south, and the Brewerton Laurentian culture, centered to the north, occurred in central New York, and is graphically recorded at the Frontenac Island site. This large, recurrently occupied primarily fishing station, became, through successive occupations by groups of these two major cultures, a veritable palimpsest, to which was added in later times minor traces of other cultures confined to an upper midden zone.