This Booknote is on The Archaeological Northeast edited by Mary Ann Levine, Kenneth E. Sassaman, and Michael S. Nassaney. The book was published in 1999 by Bergin and Garvey of Westport, Connecticut. The hardbound edition is available for about $75.00 from Greenwood Publishing Group, 88 Post Road West, Westport, Connectiut 06881. I believe that a cheaper paperback has been printed. You can call the distributor at 1/800/225-5800 for further information. For those of you with internet access, there is a website at info.greenwood.com.

    This book is what professionals call a "festschrift" which is a German word given to a group of articles written by students of a professor, usually on an occasion of honor such as retirement of the professor. In this case, the honoree is Dr. Dena Dincauze, who has taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for many years. All of the contributing Authors to the book are former students, and because Dena has focused her efforts on the prehistory of the Northeast, particularly New England, the majority of the articles are on that geographic area and time period. But the articles display a fairly broad range of subjects and theoretical orientation.

    Mary Lou Curran, in Chapter 1, provides a review of Paleoindians in New England entitled "Exploration, Colonization and Settling In: The Bull Brook Phase, Antecedents and Descendants." This review, primarily based on stone tool curation state and stone raw material, is a useful exploration of Dena Dincauze's recent theory that the Bull Brook site might be a colonization or initial exploration site in New England. Mary Lou Curran finds that that hypothesis does not match the available data.

    Chapter 2, "A Light But fast Footprint: Human Influences on the Northeastern Landscape," by George P. Nicholas, essentially looks at the impact of hunter/gatherers on the landscape and vegetation of New England. George provides a useful, although not new, viewpoint focusing on the idea that all humans alter their enviornment to some degree.

    Frederick J. Dunford in Chapter 3 provides a "Paleo-Enviornmental Context for the Middle Archaic Occupation of Cape Cod, Massachussetts." Fred's main points are that (1) the shoreline has changed radically as relative sea level has risen since the end of the Ice Age; and (2) coupled with shoreline change, the raised sea level has actually raised a perched fresh water table floating on salt water. So the Cape today is much smaller than it had been particularly during the Early and Middle Archaic, and sources of fresh water are more common. Thus, he expects Early and Middle Archaic occupation in this very well drained, sandy enviornment to have focused even more tightly on limited fresh water sources than during the Late Woodland period.

    Chapter 4 is a nice synopsis of John R. Cross's reconstruction of Neville and Stark Middle Archaic projectile point technology based on his work at the Annasnappit Pond Site. The chapter title is "By Any Other Name... A Reconsideration of Middle Archaic Lithic Technology and typology in the Northeast." John neatly sorts out projectile points from non-projectile points and the effects of breakage, resharpening, and re-flaking for rehafting on the typology of the Neville and Stark series. This chapter is a must read for anyone dealing with the Middle Archaic in New England.

    In Chapter 5, Kenneth E. Sassaman breaks the New England line-up with "A Southeastern Perspective on Soap-Stone Vessel Technology in the Northeast." Ken, of course, is focusing on the Late Archaic use of soapstone vessels and what we call in our region the Susquehanna tradition, as well as the invention of baked clay ceramics. He makes a point, surprising to this reviewer, that the oldest clay ceramics vessels in the southeast are about 1,000 years older (about 4500 B.P.) than the adoption of soapstone vessel cooking technology (circa 3700 B.P.). He explores the social and technological factors that may have in part controlled the spread or diffusion of soapstone technology and ceramic vessel technology. This chapter is relevant to anyone studying the Susquehanna tradition, its movement into New England, and its disappearance.

    In Chapter 6, "Ceramic Research in New England: Breaking the Typological Mold," Elizabeth S. Chilton explains some fundamental problems with Late Woodland ceramic typology in Southern New England. I have to emphasize here that her chapter is mis-titled and she does not deal at all with the excellent ceramic typology that has been developed in Northern New England and the Maritimes Provinces, published principally by James Petersen and david Sanger. Late Woodland ceramic typology in southern New England is based on paste characteristics first, not on decorative design or some of the other attributes that we in norther New England have found to be temporal and spatial indicators.

    David Lacey, in Chapter 7, "Myth-Busting and Prehistoric Land Use in the Greeen mountains of Vermont," provides us with an elegant refutation of the myth that Native Americans did not use the higher altitudes in the mountains of northern New England. Moreover, he has found sites at high altitude other than the important Cheshire quartzite Quarry that seems to dominate most thoughts on the subject of Green Mountains archaeology.

    Eleana Filios, in Chapter 8, presents a paper that is based on a theoretical stance called "post-processual" archaeology. Her chapter title is "Critical Theory in the Backwater of New England: Retelling the Third Millennium." As the chapter title suggests, and as the post-processualists have gained a reputation for, the chapter is argumentative and discussive and not particularly useful at connecting theory with data. Her objective seems to be reconstructing social relations in the Early Woodland based on excavation of a couple of fire-cracked rock features.

    "Fishing, Farming and Finding the Village Sites: Centering New England Late Woodland Algonquians" is Chapter 9 by Robert J. Hastenstab. Bob makes the point that perhaps New England Algonquian villages were not tightly clustered collections of houses, but he writes much without focusing well on the issue.

    In Chapter 10, Eric S. Johnson provides a review of the concepts of alliance, ethnicity and political alignment in the ethnohistoric period in southern New England in "Community and Confederation: A Political Geography of Contact Period Southern New England." The politics were cut-throat (quite literally), and alliances probably didn't last that long, especially alliances that were of a tributary nature between outlying tribal groups and a strong political center such as the Narragansett Tribe or Pequot Tribe. And then, the English and Dutch arrived in the area and the politics changed rapidly. If you had delusions about the length of time that an ethnic group or group of alliances could survive, one large enough to be visible easily archaeologically, read this article.

    In the "History of Zooarchaeologu in New England," which is Chapter 11, Catherine C. Carlson presents not so much a history of zooarchaeology, but a topic by topic review of the last thirty or forty years of faunal analysis in New England. This is a useful review for a student who wants to get started in the topic; but the bibliography is incomplete, especially for northern New England, and much of the early history is missing. For example, there is no mention of Edward S. Morse, originally of Portland, Maine, who was instrumental in the study of shell fish from shell middens in New England and who, incidentally, gave birth to the whole field of Japanese archaeology. Nor is there mention of such major early studies as Loomis and Young's analysis of faunal remaina from Casco Bay shell heaps, which was one of the greatest supporting databases of the differentiation of the sea mink as a seperate species. I get the sense reading this article that catherine either had to cut a longer study back in length to fit in the book or that she was rushed for time doing it.

    In Chapter 12, Mary Ann Levine presents "Native Copper in the Northeast: An Overview of Potential Native Copper Sources Available to Indian People." This article is a teaser. Mary Ann has finished her Ph.D. and has some copper analysis data from archaeological specimens, which helps sort who was getting copper from where in the last three-thousand plus years. This article is simply a review of the available copper sources, without any trace element data. What we are all waiting for is a much more definite article on the subject tying the arcaeological artifacts to known sources if possible, and looking for patterns in the archaeological data.

    Chapter 13, by Elizabeth A. Little is entitled "Radiocarbon Dating of Shell on the Southern Coast of New England." Herein Elizabeth presents a review of the effects of old carbon reservoir from marine enviornments and other correction factors (fractionation) that must be taken into account when dealing with radiocarbon dates on shell versus radiocarbon dates on terrestrial wood. This article should be required reading for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in archaeological dating courses, or even just general prehistoric archaeology courses.

    Michael S. Nassaney contributed Chapter 14, "The Significance of the Turners Fall Locality in Connecticut River Archaeology." This is a culteral resource management look at multiple National Register Distric properties, and such is a useful article for students of archaeological management issues. I'm afraid that this particular chapter would not have much of interest to The Maine Archaeological Society readership in general.

    The final chapter, by Mitchell T. Mulholland, is a historic archaeology ("An Interdisciplinary Study of the John Alden Houses, 1627 and 1653, Duxbury, Massachusetts: Archaeology and Architecture"). Here Mitch, who is primarily a prehistoric archaeologist, crosses the boundary into historic archaeology (17th century historic archaeology). I'm not qualified to make critical comment on his work, but I have a feeling that my historic archaeologist colleagues would definitely want to get their hands on a copy of this chapter.

    In sum, this book is a must read for any serious student of New England archaeology. But buy the paperback: $75 for this volume is too much. Illustrations are sparse, most are line drawings and there are very few photographs, and what there are for photographs did not produce well on the paper chosen.

    Finally, for those of you who might be students and want to photocopy a small section of the book, be aware that all of the references are combined in a singel bibliography that runs to fifty some pages in length. So read the article and make sure you get the references that you are going to need, if you are going to want any.