Printable Version

Hudson Valley Prehistory: Artifacts and Ecofacts

In 2001, Hudsonia is conducting several archaeology projects in Columbia and Dutchess counties to advance the understanding of pre­historic times, the eleven millennia before 1609 when Henry Hudson’s Half Moon sailed up the stream then known as the River of the Mountains. In addition to the more durable stone and pottery artifacts left by prehistoric people, we also study “ecofacts” — the remains of plants and animals from ancient campsites which offer data about past cultural adaptations. Still, the most frequently found traces of pre­historic encampments are fragments of stone modified by human activity.

SOME HUDSON RIVER PREHISTORY

The soils and climate of the Hudson Valley were similar to those of southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic region, and so brought about similar cultural adaptations. Evidence to date indicates subsistence based on land mammals, especially the white-tailed deer, until around 1,500 years ago when people developed a second dietary focus on migratory fish in spring. Using Robert Funk’s⁷ excavations and analyses, Audrey Reifler and I performed a species identification analysis of a collection of bone refuse, and mapped the distribution of sturgeon remains.¹³ This research focused on the “Tufano site” along the river near Nutten Hook, where a high concentration of hand-sized flint blades, thought to be for butchering the massive fish, had been found in pits adjacent to one of the valley’s few known prehistoric cemeteries.

The timing and degree of dependence on plants in various subregions of the Northeast is debated among archaeologists. Between 1,000 and 600 years ago, the Iroquoian people to the west developed a heavy dependence on farming of maize, beans, and squash. A paucity of evidence for maize cultivation in the Hudson Valley suggests little dependence on farming during that period. Recent discoveries and improved technology for dating ecofacts, however, may change our notions of early horticulture in the region.

One of my research interests is the nine centuries around 2,000 years ago, for which archaeologists have recognized a dearth of sites in the Hudson Valley and elsewhere in the Northeast, compared to the previous three millennia.¹² Although people were certainly present in this period, occupied sites were not abundant in the usual landscape settings. Occupation debris has been found, however, deeply buried by flood deposits in the river bottomlands. As during the seven previous millennia, people doubtless gathered wild plants, hunted, and fished in accord with seasonal abundance. They probably burned the forest periodically to clear undergrowth, facilitate travel, and improve berry picking. Still, many questions remain unanswered about the apparent temporary population decline in the Northeast during this mysterious interval.

	The distribution of side-notched and narrow stemmed points in the Hudson Valley reflects a period of seasonal migrations around 4,500 years ago, as people moved cyclically between warm-season, waterside camps and cold-sheltered, backcountry camps.
	Broad points and fishtail points appear to have been in use around 3,000 years ago when people were concentrated more along the river. The earliest durable containers in the regions - soft soapstone bowls and hard ceramic pots without much decoration - date from this period.
	Pentagonal and thin triangular points dominated the projectile style around 1,000 years ago. In addition to foraging for wild foods, some people of the region cultivated crops during this period, and some produced pottery with more elaborate decorations than had their forbears. Four centuries ago, the people of the Hudson Valley called themselves Lenape and Mohican.
These silhouettes of projectile points, from the “Deer Terrace site” on the border of Dutchess and Columbia counties, illustrate the temporal framework for human habitation of the Northeast, as developed by Robert E. Funk7 and William A. Ritchie,14,15 former State Archaeologists of New York. Through the location and analysis of artifacts, we learn that the earliest people of the region, around 11,000 years ago, traveled long distances in search of stone for the tools they used to procure food and to make clothing from hides. “Ecofacts” — including the remains of fish and wild plants — give evidence of dependence upon varied biological resources for subsistence.

2001 PROJECTS

Over the last dozen years, more than 160 college and high school students have participated in hands-on archaeology at “Grouse Bluff,” a promontory above the Tivoli Bays in Red Hook. This summer the Bard Archaeology Field School will excavate the area around a bed of burnt rocks, roughly 30 cm (1 foot) below ground surface, possibly used 3,000 years ago for roasting fish. In the laboratory, we are now conducting “flotation” on soil samples from the Grouse Bluff site: dissolving sediments in water and removing botanical remains that float, such as burnt shells of nuts and seeds. With these ecofacts we can reconstruct the environs of the camp and infer the diet of its inhabitants at various times over the last 7,000 years. Mary Burns and Audrey Reifler, former and current students of Bard’s Graduate School of Environmental Studies, are sifting through the sediments from several prehistoric cooking pits and examining the residues under the microscope to identify plant species that may have been used for food or medicine.

This year, we will also prepare a report on the “Spicebush site,’ another prehistoric camp location at the Tivoli Bays. Here, high school and college students in the Bard Archaeology Field School discovered a fire pit containing pottery with decorations from around the time of the earliest known cultivation of plants in the Hudson Valley, at least 1,000 years ago. The Greenway Trail passes close by Spicebush and Grouse Bluff, affording ideal educational opportunities for the public. Also this year, along the river in Columbia County, we will conduct test excavations at two areas where public trails have been proposed, to determine the presence of archaeological sites and the potential need for their protection.

In another current project, we will attempt to stabilize a prehistoric campsite on state owned Magdalen Island, west of Tivoli North Bay. Mary Burns³ found that important ecofacts and artifacts still remain despite decades of looting by hobbyist collectors and curio­seekers. Unscientific digging has left the site full of craters. The goal of our project is to map the disturbances and then refill the pits to keep archaeological materials from falling out of place. Loss of precise location renders artifacts much less meaningful.

While great scientific benefit can come from citizen participation in projects such as these, tremendous loss may also occur if artifacts are taken from sites without documenting their exact locations and notifying an archaeologist of their discovery. By demonstrating active conservation of cultural resources, we hope to dissuade relic hunters from stealing the Hudson’s Native heritage.

Children are often keen on archaeology. The Bard Archaeology web pages (http://inside.bard.edu/archaeology) have delightful pictures and stories from some of the nearly 1,000 fourth-graders from Red Hook who have visited Grouse Bluff. The children helped college students dig and measure, finding projectile points, flint drill tips, pottery, and soapstone bowl fragments, along with abundant fire-cracked rock from prehistoric hearths. The fourth graders studied rough stone tools and performed laboratory experiments using tool replicas to crack and shell nuts, which was the children’s work of the Lenape and Mohicans. There are plans for expanding student archaeology programs in schools throughout Dutchess and Columbia counties.

We are preparing a brochure for elementary and middle school students — Hidden Heritage: Prehistoric Campsites in the Hudson Valley¹¹ — that will interest and inform adults as well. The brochure will accompany a newly refurbished traveling exhibit of artifacts and photographs from the Hudson Valley. Dozens of schools, public libraries, and historical societies around the middle Hudson Valley have used the traveling exhibit over the past decade. The brochure and exhibit can be requested through the author.

These projects are designed to advance knowledge about prehistoric people through scientific investigation and community involvement. A wealth of resources is available to readers interested in further study of our local prehistoric heritage. Robert Funk⁸ has compared prehistoric use of the Tivoli Bays estuary environment with that of the Susquehanna River near Oneonta, and the Atlantic coast at Fishers Island. A 1992 issue (Volume 9) of the Hudson Valley Regional Review contains several other articles on Tivoli Bays archaeology.^4,10,16 These are also available on-line in the Bard Archaeology web pages: http://inside.bard.edu/archaeology. Other useful texts available in public libraries and some bookstores, include Herbert Kraft’s⁹ prehistory and history of the Delaware (or “Lenape” in their language), who lived between the middle Hudson and Chesapeake Bay. John Bierhorst^1,2 provides scholarship on the folklore of the Lenape, and many exciting Lenape stories. Shirley Dunn^5,6 offers historical information on the Mohicans, who lived from Catskill Creek and the Roeliff-Jansen Kill to Lake Champlain.

Our 2001 archaeology projects are supported by several state and federal agencies that have recognized the importance of archaeology in understanding the environment: as funding administrator, the New York State (NYS) Department of Transportation; as government sponsor, the Greenway Conservancy for the Hudson River Valley; and as providers of matching funds, Hudsonia and the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation through the Hudson River National Estuarine Research Reserve. Four-fifths of the funding comes through the NYS Transportation Enhancement Program, a diverse array of projects funded by the federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA).

REFERENCES CITED