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NYSAA Bulletin No. 26 — Croton Point Midden Excavation — Passage 5 (part 3)

Louis A. Brennan et al. (1962) 241 words View original →

[Louis A. Brennan et al. (1962)] The grave was 26 inches in depth and the fragile skulls were badly fractured by freezing of the heavy soil. The grave was situated 150 feet from salt marshes on land many times inundated by marine tides. Ten feet south of the grave was a circular pit 28 inches in depth by 30 inches in diameter which contained only valves of the soft clam. Scattered in a semicircle north of the grave were 21 shallow pits 15 to 18 inches in depth from the old occupational surface; over all was eight inches of heavy farm loam. These pits were located and staked while plowing at extra depth. The only item found between the pits was a medium-sized Sebonac pot below the plowing depth, lying on its side without support of stones and crushed in by frost and traction of heavy machinery. Underneath the pot and for about two feet of the surrounding vicinity the soil was brick-red from fires. In the pits were stunted shells of the soft clam, remains of bug scallops and seed oysters that inhabit the banks of salt-marsh creeks; no quahogs were present. The occupation was evidently in one of the periods when the hard-shell clam was absent from the north side of the local bay. Judging from the nature of the food remains in these pits, it was a season when food was scarce, perhaps partially the cause of the death of the two young subjects.