Occupation 2

Abstract

Discovery of the midden deposits and underlying altered subsoil that are now attributed to Occupation 2 was indeed a happy event, for it fulfilled the promise of intact Archaic coastal components suggested by private artifact collections from the Fox Islands that I had studied earlier (Bourque 1992a). Writing over two decades after that discovery, when archaeologists in the Northeast casually discuss Archaic occupations extending back to 8000 b.p., I can recall both the fascination that Late Archaic cultures of the Northeast have held for American archaeologists since the inception of the discipline and the pitiful weakness of the data pertaining to the lives of these people that was available until quite recently.