NYSAA Bulletin No. 52 — Archaic Sites: Croton Point & Dogan Point — Passage 3 (part 27)

[Various (1971)] Only a single stone pot fragment has so far been reported from a site of the Snook Kill phase, which I have therefore attributed to the terminal Archaic stage (Ritchie 1965a: 135, Figure 1). The succeeding culture manifestations of the Susquehanna tradition pertain to the Transitional stage, characterized by the use of steatite vessels (Witthoft 1953; Ritchie 1965a: 149-155). Cultures of the Susquehanna tradition directly follow and clearly overlap recognized complexes of the narrow point tradition in the Hudson Valley (Ritchie 1958; Funk 1965; n.d.), on Long Island (Ritchie 1959), Martha's Vineyard (Ritchie 1969b: 219-223), and elsewhere in eastern and southern New York and southern New England, and probably in the New Jersey-northeastern Pennsylvania region as well. In the Hudson Valley and on Martha's Vineyard, however, the component levels of the excavated stratified sites representing this period are usually thin and intermixed, making analysis and interpretation dependent upon discrete and larger components elsewhere.

In central New York it has been possible to define the Frost Island phase, C-14 dated at the O'Neil site at 1250 B.C. ± 100 years (Y-1274) (Ritchie 1965a: 155-163). This phase is widely represented, mostly by surface sites along major streams, in central, eastern and southern New York and southward into Pennsylvania and New Jersey as a part of Witthoft's "Susquehanna Soapstone culture" (Witthoft 1953).