Publications

This volume is based on a symposium that we organized for theNewYork StateArchaeologicalAssociation’s 94th annual meeting in Ellenville, New York, on April 24, 2010. Our intention for the symposium was to highlight thewide range of current archaeological research in NewYork during the period of time we have referred to as the early Late Prehistoric period (A.D. 700–1300). As anyone following New York archaeology realizes, this is an arbitrary slice of time within the dynamic history of Native Americans in the state, but one that has been quite contentious over the past few decades. This contentiousness has centered on the origins of the ethnic
landscape that was recorded by early European missionaries, settlers, and explorers.Was that landscape the result of migrations and displacements, or was it part of a long-evolving, in situ pattern? Can these two alternatives really capture the dynamics of the past, or are they too simplistic in their conceptualizations? There is a wide range of ongoing scholarship on these questions.
What we wanted from the symposium and ultimately this volume was to show that while these questions are important, they are far from the only topics of research being addressed by archaeologists working on the early Late Prehistoric period.

The symposium comprised nine papers, the abstracts of which follow this preface. Also included in the symposium was a discussion of the papers by James Bradley. The papers included reports on excavations at specific sites, regional settlement pattern analyses, lithic sourcing, ceramic analysis, and a summary of results from an ongoing research program involving a variety of analyses. The symposium certainly captured a wide range of research that demonstrated the dynamic state of archaeological investigations within New York. The present volume comprises updates of six of those papers, an introduction, and an eighth paper that was not presented in the symposium. As such, the volume provides a strong sense of the state of archaeological research on the early Late Prehistoric period in New York at the beginning of the 2010s.

Thanks are due to those colleagues who participated in the symposium and to those who contributed to this volume.Meeting deadlines is not always an easy proposition, but in all instances the deadlines we established for chapter authors were met, making the production of this volume not only easier, but also very quick. The many peer reviewers for the volume and its individual chapters met our deadlines and in all instances provided well considered comments, suggestions, and criticisms, which resulted in a stronger volume. Thanks are due to Jonathan Lothrop who coordinated the peer review process for the volume and Janice Morrison for copy editing. Thanks also toMaria Sparks for managing the volume’s production.