Providing a Context for Three Early through Middle Archaic Pit Features in Southeastern Connecticut (original) (raw)

This is a tale of three features. They are not especially complex or otherwise interesting features, but their excavation over a short span of time from two adjacent sites raised a number of important questions, most of which remain poorly answered. [:] These relatively large, deep, ovate features marked by their strong-brown (“red”) sediments, were encountered during mitigation excavations of an area called the Lake of Isles in North Stonington, Connecticut, an 800-acre landscape being developed into 2 18-hole golf courses associated with nearby Foxwoods Casino. In chronological order, AMS dates indicate that they date to 8260+/-50, 7910+/-40 and 5510+/-40, radiocarbon years BP. They thus fall into the Early Archaic and Middle Archaic periods. In the field, two of these features were treated as possible burials and were therefore only partially investigated. The other, partially impacted by a septic line, was presumed to represent a Woodland period storage feature. An interpretation that we were forced to reassess when an Early Archaic date was returned on a hazelnut shell fragment. I propose that it is likely that all three of these features represent human burials, with no trace of human remains. This supposition has been influenced by Dianna Doucette's excavations at the Annasnappet Pond site, which produced similar features, some of which were quite clearly burials.

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