| West Rock Ridge is an intrusive diabase sill that was injected between layers of brownstone bedrock, and subsequently exposed by erosion. Although its precipitous west facing cliff and more gently sloping but rocky and uneven eastern face, provide one of South-Central Connecticut's most rugged environments, the objective of this project was to see how this setting could contribute to understanding of Southern New England's prehistoric occupants.;Following Barber's (1981) advice concerning "new ways" to look at "new data" the project focused on changing land-use patterns on the part of South-Central Connecticut's prehistoric inhabitants. It was the conclusion of this investigation that Small Stemmed Point Tradition habitation of West Rock Ridge occurred under conditions of high hunter-gatherer population density and territorial packing. These conditions favored thorough coverage of available territorial ranges, and inclusion of otherwise marginal resource patches, such as West Rock, into annual subsistence rounds.;It can be further suggested that cultural adaptations which rely on decreased residential mobility and focal dependence on vegetative and/or aquatic resources adjacent to habitations would lead to decreased coverage of available territorial ranges. In fact, the continued reliance on high residential mobility, despite increasing numbers of hunter-gatherers during the Late Archaic Period, appears to have been a major factor pushing Small Stemmed Point Tradition populations to utilize resource patches that were apparently marginal at other times.;The long temporal duration of the Small Stemmed Point Tradition argues against models of cultural complexity that postulate increasing population density as a "prime mover" for the adaptation of hierarchical societies. As Woodburn suggests (1998) the differences between residentially mobile "immediate return" hunter-gatherers, as opposed to more sedentary "delayed return" economies have important implications in terms of socio-political organization and structure. Immediate return economies are more often egalitarian in comparison to delayed return economies in which some forms of permanent authority and hierarchical differentiation are found. The persistence of very stable cultural patterns, such as the Small Stemmed Point Tradition may therefore have its explanation in terms of individual choice and agency, favoring autonomous social relations. |
