Tree Throws and Site Selection: Late Archaic Period Occupation at the Preston Plains Site in Southeastern Connecticut. more

Several Archaic and Woodland period sites in the New England and the Middle Atlantic contain deep soil features (DSFs) that have become objects of a pit house versus tree throw debate. Contributing to this debate, a case study of a DSF complex at southeastern Connecticut’s Preston Plains Site argues that tree throws generated such features, and proposes how long-term processes transform tree throw disturbances into the varied expressions DSFs exhibit.  Most important, local Late Archaic Period (ca. 5-3000 B.P.) foragers appear to have centered some of their short-term residential sites on tree throw hollows.  In view of similar patterns from Mesolithic and early Neolithic European sites, these findings highlight what is likely an under-recognized and globally relevant aspect of human behavior in forested landscapes.