Publications

In the Northeast five types of fluted point Paleoindian sites are recognized, viz., quarry-workshops, habitations, kill-butchery sites, burials or caches, and isolated occurrences of artifacts — chiefly projectile points. It is possible to discriminate between encampments that were inhabited by colonizing, pioneer groups and residential sites of settled populations who had become familiar with a region's resources. No archeological site in the Northeast has yielded an artifact assemblage that is demonstrably older and at variance with known fluted point Paleoindian industries. During the period of fluted point use in the Northeast, which may have endured for hundreds of years, at least three phases are recognizable based upon projectile point morphology. These phases, Shoop-Debert, Cumberland-Barnes, and Crowfield, have not been dated satisfactorily and their order of succession is inferred from stylistic variation rather than stratigraphy. Since actual dietary remains are so few on Northeastern Paleoindian sites and the significance of these data is open to speculation, close attention must be paid to settlement patterns if the lifeways of eastern North America's earliest inhabitants are to be understood.