NYSAA Bulletin No. 52 — Archaic Sites: Croton Point & Dogan Point — Passage 7 (part 3)

[Various (1971)] This awareness that a comprehensive picture of whole cultural contexts could only be approached through the elucidation of settlement data-the "frozen" aspect of prehistoric social structure-motivated him to plan a multi-season project on sites of all types and periods. Supported largely by National Science Foundation grants, this project lasted from 1957 through 1965. As a matter of course, much of the present writer's fieldwork from 1960 to 1965 was devoted to settlement excavations. A great deal of the information acquired by the settlement project was presented by Ritchie in a major synthesis on The Archaeology of New York State , published by the Natural History Press, the first edition of which appeared in 1965. This was the summation of a life's work, and in it were disclosed major changes in theoretical orientation, which stood in sharp contrast to the orientation, manifested in the "green bible." Ritchie had definitely abandoned the McKern system in favor of the more flexible terms and concepts proposed by Willey and Phillips in their Method and Theory in American Archaeology (1958).

He was also usin g the historical-developmental stage classification still popular in North America. But more importantly, his total commitment to the ecological approach was obvious on nearly every page. He attempted to reconstruct past environments and to show how the prehistoric cultural systems were articulated with those environments.