Upper Delaware Valley Archaeological Synthesis

The advent of archaeology conducted in response to federal and state laws and regulations, commonly termed cultural resource management (CRM) archaeology, has profoundly changed the face of the discipline in the United States. Some fifty years after the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), most of the archaeology in the country by far is conducted under the aegis of these and comparable state authorities. This has resulted in the accumulation of an unprecedented quantity of archaeological data. Unfortunately, with the pressures of project and government agency schedules there has been little incentive to summarize and disseminate this knowledge. Much of the information is hidden in a few copies of final reports that lie in state repositories and are generally unavailable to the public and often to other researchers, the so-called gray literature.Archaeologists of all stripes have long recognized the need for the integration and synthesis of the available masses of data and their presentation in an accessible format. Only recently, however, have we begun to see concrete steps to address this issue. The sheer quantity of the data is overwhelming, and it takes a concerted effort and long-term commitment to attempt to pull together all the various strands of information. Recent efforts include Wholey and Nash's (2018) synthesis of Middle Atlantic archaeology—reviewed in this journal in volume 86, no. 1 (2019)—and the monumental statewide summary of Pennsylvania's Native American archaeology just published by Carr et al.1 These books integrate the findings of CRM archaeology projects with those of more traditional academic or museum-based investigations, and finally offer the public and the archaeological research community easier access to critical knowledge of the regional past. The major problem with this approach is the substantial lag time in traditional publication, meaning that, to some degree, published syntheses in book format are necessarily out of date when they appear.A different approach to regional synthesis is reflected in the summary of archaeology in the Upper Delaware Valley by R. Michael Stewart. The New Jersey Historic Preservation Office has chosen to present the effort in an online document available to the public free of charge. The focus is on a discrete area that has witnessed over a century of work by prominent archaeologists. The author, a widely respected scholar of Middle Atlantic archaeology with a long personal history of involvement in the region's archaeology, has chosen to focus on a few topics of long-standing importance to researchers: (1) the use of predictive models of precontact settlement patterns as tools for understanding and managing the treatment of the archaeological past; (2) the integration of the large body of radiocarbon dates with archaeological assemblages, correlating dates with artifact types and excavated specimens of plants and animals used by the past inhabitants of the region; and (3) a comprehensive bibliography of archaeology in the Upper Delaware River drainage.In accomplishing these tasks Stewart faced the common problem of defining a meaningful geographic area for his focus, one relevant both to past cultural patterns and the historic record of archaeological research. Any definition of a cultural region is likely to be somewhat arbitrary and limiting. Stewart notes the differing extent of physiographic, hydrological, and archaeological criteria for the “Upper Delaware Valley,” settling on an area encompassing portions of New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Stewart has ameliorated this problem by drawing on a vast body of information from areas considerably beyond his defined region as it applies to the more narrowly defined archaeological study area.The first volume deals with the problems of predicting archaeological site locations using inductive and deductive (behavioral) models of how precontact groups used the regional landscape. Inductive or correlational models work from observed relationships between environmental features (e.g., slope, soils, drainage, vegetation, aspect) and recorded site locations. Such models are limited by the quality of the site locational data, the grain of environmental mapping, and the fundamental problem of inferring causation—how behavior has influenced settlement patterns, which in the end are what archaeology is all about—from correlation. Moreover, they all face the question of how environment broadly defined, and local environments and settings, changed over the course of thousands of years: the answer is greatly and in a complex manner.2Nevertheless, the vast majority of predictive models in use are correlational models that suffer from all the deficiencies you might predict because of the issues just outlined. These models, however, are favored by bureaucrats who need a quick and easy way to justify decisions on resource protection: for example, when to call for an archaeological survey of a project area in response to legal mandates. They generally fail, in my experience, in comparison with predictions or expectations regarding site location based on individual professional experience. Predictions derived from these models often boil down to “they lived near water on level ground with productive soils.” Most of these models also fail to grapple with the basic issue of what constitutes a “site” in archaeological terms. Anthropologically satisfying behavioral (deductive) models are few—many based on theoretical frameworks like Optimal Foraging Theory—and difficult to operationalize in practice, especially in the practice of CRM archaeology. They remain the ideal, but it seems unlikely that we will see many such models developed and used on a routine basis.Stewart does a fine job of summarizing the approaches and uses of predictive models, drawing on a wide geographic base, and exhaustively reviewing the various attempts at modeling precontact settlement. Few non-archaeologists will want to read this volume thoroughly but for professionals in the field, especially those working in the Upper Delaware Valley and surrounding regions, and those nonprofessionals wanting to acquaint themselves with the subject, this summary offers a valuable resource and reference.The second volume provides a comprehensive account of radiocarbon dates from the region and their contexts. From the perspective of professionals working in the Upper Delaware Valley or, for that matter, in eastern North America, this will certainly be the most valuable part of Stewart's work. He presents a series of tables with all the currently available radiocarbon dates from sites in the region, their context, related references, and the associations of radiocarbon dates with “diagnostic” stone tool types, pottery types, and a variety of other artifacts, as well as plant and animal remains. This summary, first of all, addresses the chronologically “diagnostic” character of most common bifacially worked stone tool types—“spearpoints” or “arrowheads” in common parlance—long supposed to be specific to a time period or archaeological culture. The use of such artifacts as “type fossils” has been subject to a thoroughgoing critique by several researchers in recent years.3 Nevertheless, many archaeologists, professional and otherwise, continue to rely on supposedly diagnostic tool types to date the excavation contexts in which they are found. Stewart's tables will be an essential reference in sorting out those types with true chronological meaning, as they will be for analogous inferences concerning widely distributed Native American pottery types. Perhaps just as importantly, they provide a basis for tracing the history of Native plant use and cultivation, the use of animal foods, and the relation of both to the development and use of pottery and stone (steatite, or soapstone) vessels for cooking and storage.Few archaeologists will want to read through this volume in detail, but the tables and related discussions in this volume will serve as essential references for researchers investigating any of these topics for some time to come. Fortunately, more archaeologists are becoming aware of the critical importance of radiocarbon dates and radiocarbon-dated archaeological deposits in their work. The advent of accelerator mass spectroscopy (AMS) radiocarbon dating now gives archaeologists the ability to directly date small carbonized plant and animal specimens rather than by association with large charcoal or other samples. The steady accumulation of such dates will eventually require a supplement or update to Stewart's tables, but they will undoubtedly remain the standard reference for some time to come.The final volume is a bibliography that encapsulates the history of archaeological studies in the Upper Delaware Valley over the past century and a half. Anyone conducting research in the region, or anyone interested in starting to read about the region's archaeological record, will want to consult this volume. Stewart has made a thorough search of the published sources and it is difficult to believe that much has been missed in this essential research tool.As I suggested above, I doubt that many professionals, and certainly not many nonspecialists with simply a general interest in the archaeology of the region, will want to read through these volumes in their entirety. I could quibble about the need for more careful proofreading, but I doubt that many of the users of these volumes will note the minor editorial issues or care. But anyone wanting an overview of the archaeological record in the Upper Delaware Valley and surrounding regions, the role of predictive models in archaeology, or current data on reliably radiocarbon-dated archaeological contexts, will want to start here. Stewart and the New Jersey Historic Preservation Office are to be commended on this effort. After years of complaints about the lack of regional archaeological syntheses and the inaccessible “gray literature” we are starting to see substantive attempts to grapple with the accumulating mass of archaeological data

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  Open Access•Paul A Raber•North American Archaeologist•2021

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