Publications

The Roundtop site was reported by William A. Ritchie in a chapter of his 1973 volume with Robert E. Funk, Aboriginal Settlement Patterns of the Northeast. Ritchie interpreted the site as an eleventh-century AD village with two overlapping longhouse patterns and macrobotanical remains of maize (Zea mays ssp. mays), common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), and squash (Cucurbita pepo). Based on that report the site became established in the literature as having the earliest evidence for longhouses and maize-bean-squash agriculture in the Northeast. Ritchie’s dating of the site was based on a single radiocarbon date on a large sample of wood charcoal and the potteryassemblage, which he associated primarily with the Carpenter Brook phase (AD 1000-1100) of his Owasco culture (AD 1000-1300). He considered other late pre-contact occupations of the site as transitory. New radiocarbon dates reported in 1999 and 2000 and recent Bayesian modeling of those radiocarbon dates suggest that the later occupations were more substantial than Ritchie suggested. Here I report four additional radiocarbon dates, new Bayesian modeling of all available Roundtop dates, and an analysis of the site’s complete pottery assemblage. The results further clarify the site’s history and substantiate the importance of post-1100 AD occupations at the site.