CULTURAL ADAPTATIONS
of the
LOWEST CONNECTICUT VALLEY
John E. Pfeiffer
Chapter 7
7.0 The Study Area: A Close Range Perspective
My choice of this region of Connecticut as the location of intensive study was made because of three factors. (1) Earlier studies in the lowest Connecticut valley townships of Lyme and Old Lyme showed a dense, complex, and varied array of sites and components. My review of various local amateur collections suggested that many sites related to the Late and Terminal Archaic periods. (2) The study area's physiographic setting offered the potential of studying various environmental zones and cultural adaptations across short distances. The study area which fronts the Long Island Sound is bounded by a major New England river and has several smaller tributaries flowing through it. The area has expansive coastal, riverine, and upland wetlands. There are also river bottomlands, interior lakes as well as rugged uplands. (3) The mouth of the Connecticut River with its expansive bar and shoal system impeded early unplanned development and as a result the area has prehistoric sites that are well preserved.
7.1 The Study Area Setting
The study area, which encompasses approximately 6500 hectares, is located in southeastern Connecticut on the eastern shore of the Connecticut River where the river enters Long Island Sound. The study is confined to the towns of Lyme and Old Lyme and concentrates on the drainages of the Black Hall, Lieutenant, and Eight Mile Rivers (Fig. 7.1.1).
The study area is a superb location in which to do archaeology because it has not been greatly developed. The Connecticut River, which forms the western boundary of the study area, represents one of the very few major rivers in the Northeast that does not have a large city at its mouth. In fact, what lies at the mouth are two small towns; Old Lyme on the east shore with a population of under 5000, and Old Saybrook on the west, with a population of under 15,000. Old Lyme is a small bedroom community for the most part; it also has commercial centers with small shops, grocery stores, hardware, etc. Old Saybrook has a larger commercial complex, but still is relatively small for a town in the Boston-New York corridor.
The two towns of Lyme and Old Lyme are situated on a geologic formation called the Old Lyme dome, that forms part of the northeastern highland region of Connecticut. The Old Lyme dome is metamorphic gneiss with occasional pegmatitic intrusions. Glacial processes during the Pleistocene had marked effect upon the topography. Old Lyme and Lyme are characterized by a multitude of glacial and ice stagnation features such as drumlins, moraines, kettles, and eskers. There is also obvious evidence of deep deposits of till. Sorted gravels, sand and clay were generated from outwash extending from the glacial front, as well as from the subsequent more local phenomenon of the melting of isolated blocks of ice. Where the Old Lyme dome stood high in the way of glacial flow, bedrock was contoured into teardrop formations and evidence of a generalized fluting of the topography can be observed. Large blocks of bedrock were torn off in these same areas. Some of these were transported up to several kilometers and remain there as erratics. Others were plucked from the bedrock and shifted to the leeward side of the bedrock exposure. There, massive piles of erratics form mazes of tunnels and rockfall caves. (Black, personal communication 1973).
The regolith is most certainly glacially derived and is both young and most often thin. In the flatter areas, thicker deposits of soil exist as a result of post-Pleistocene deposition.
A floodplain has developed in the area adjacent to the Connecticut River where the smaller Black Hall and Lieutenant Rivers merged. This has been submerged by rising sea level and overlain by as much as three to five meters of aquatic and marine peat. (Horne personal communication 1983, Pfeiffer 1984).
These processes have all produced a varied topography over short distances in the study area. Till covered hills, bedrock outcrops, rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, inland wetlands and riverine marshes dot the countryside. Such a varied topography has meant equally varied ecological communities separated by short distances. Upland terrestrial, lacustrine, riverine, and coastal environments are all present.
Core sampling in the study area at Rogers Lake by Deevey and Davis (1964) and Davis (1967) has produced one of the better known pollen sequences in southern New England. Coupled with the study of this inland lake are studies of the Connecticut River peat deposits by Wesleyan University's Earth and Environmental Sciences department. The latter studies concentrated upon dating marine transgression of the flood plain zone. Both of these studies have helped archaeologists reconstruct past environmental conditions to which particular cultural units adapted (Pfeiffer 1984, McBride 1984 a&b, Lavin 1988).
Davis (1967) characterized the pollen sequence as being made up of four specific zones: T, A, B, & C. Zone T was the oldest, dating between 15,000-12,500 BP (13,050-10,450 BC). It represented a tundra-treeless environment. However, through time arboreal pollen increased suggesting that trees were becoming more numerous. Herb pollen through this initial period was by far the most dominant. Zone A represents a temporal span from 12,500-9500 BP (1045 BC-2450 BC). Birch appears to be very common in the beginning with spruce rising dramatically in number in the middle, hardwood, oak, hornbeam and ash coming in toward the end, and finally pine at the end. Zone B is dated at 9500-7000 BP (7500-5000 BC) and indicates an increase in pine (and to a smaller degree oak) in the forest. This would suggest a coniferous forest interspersed with a few deciduous species. Zone C dated from 7000 BP-present (5000 BC-present). This zone reflects a hardwood dominated mixed forest. This zone can be subdivided into three segments. C1 is suggestive of an oak hemlock forest, C2 an oak-hickory and C3 an oak-chestnut forest. This portion of the spectrum covers the periods that are being addressed in this dissertation. The changes from hemlock toward oak and hickory are suggestive of warming and drying conditions. This has been dated in southeastern Massachusetts to between 4000 BP and 3000 BP (Lavin 1988:106). The evidence suggests that this climatic change led to the desiccation of the interior wetlands. Similar evidence is cited by Custer (1984:38) for the adjoining Mid-Atlantic region during this same period. Lavin (1988:106) points out that during the same period of warming and drying the productivity of the river lowland may have increased due to the rise of favorable conditions for nut and seed bearing species.
Terrestrial faunal communities that existed in such environments would have been those that survived on mast foods such as whitetailed deer, black bear, beaver, woodchuck, cottontail rabbit, and gray squirrel. Birds that would have been present were turkey, ruffed grouse, duck, and Canada goose (Waters 1962,1965).
Figure 7.1.1 Towns of Study Area
7.2 The Study Area Research
Archaeological sites in the Lyme and Old Lyme study area have come to my attention through prolonged survey techniques including (1) informant and collections review, (2) archival sources, (3) map and photographic review (Pfeiffer 1982a) and surface inspection, (4) walking survey and (5) sub-surface testing. Systematic testing and predictive modeling in the same area were undertaken as a joint effort in 1983 with McBride (1984a&b) and coordinated with this study's survey.
In 1972, the only published references to archaeological
sites in the study area were Praus (1942) and Willoughby (1935). The survey
initiated in 1972 and excavations in 1973 were intended to test the hypothesis
of a seasonal shifting settlement pattern for the "narrow stemmed tradition"
(Pfeiffer 1980b). Two sites with the appropriate components were studied,
Ames Rockshelter and Griswold Point (Pfeiffer 1982b). Both sites were on
the same drainage and separated by 4.5 km. Griswold Point, formerly known
as the Old Lyme Shellheaps (Praus 1942) was a coastal site while the Ames
site was in an interior upland setting. Thus began the study of Lyme and
Old Lyme.
Dr. John E. Pfeiffer