Abstract
There is a vigorous debate among archaeologists working in New England and eastern New York as to when and why prehistoric people began to focus on coastal and estuarine resources (cf. Dincauze 1973; Braun 1974; Brennan 1976; Snow 1980). However, there is no doubt that by 2,000 years ago, patterns of coastal land use left prominent features in the archaeological record of southern New England, with shell middens being the most visible class of remains. Studies of regional side distributions indicate a marked increase in the number of sites located along or near the coast of southern New England during the last 3,000 years of the prehistoric period (Barber 1979; Thorbahn et al. 1980). The estuaries of coastal rivers appear to have been a particularly attractive environmental zone for locating relatively large, semipermanent settlements (Dincauze 1973, 1974, 1980; Barber 1979).
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Thorbahn, P.F., Cox, D.C. (1988). The Effect of Estuary Formation on Prehistoric Settlement in Southern Rhode Island. In: Nicholas, G.P. (eds) Holocene Human Ecology in Northeastern North America. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2376-9_8
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