Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

6-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Anthropology

Advisor

Kelly Britt

Committee Members

William parry

Cameron McNeil

Rich Veit

Subject Categories

Anthropology | Archaeological Anthropology | Geographic Information Sciences | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Keywords

GIS, landscape, Snook Kill, viewshed, visibility, Least Cost path

Abstract

The Esopus Drainage of the Hudson Valley, New York, has been utilized by the Indigenous population for its vast resources embedded within the landscape. Consequently, the changing climate and warming trends of the Holocene transformed the landscape, shifting rivers, fauna, and floral resources. Relevantly, due to the prehistoric nature of these populations, the archaeological record is pointedly incomplete. The landscape’s geographical features are still within reach of archaeological and phenomenological study to fill in some of the interruptions.

This dissertation focuses on the Late Archaic hunter-gatherer population of the Snook Kill phase of the Esopus Drainage running west of the Hudson River in Ulster County along the Esopus Creek. It applies the phenomenological philosophies of landscape theory with Geographical Information systems (GIS) applications.

The Esopus Creek meanders through Ulster County as a tributary of The Hudson River Valley. Its land has been utilized, and the region of human activity reaches into the earliest Indigenous movements within its territories. The region has never been analyzed under phenomenological methodology and is ready for this undertaking. The Snook Kill phase and the phenomenological have been largely ignored in the published literature of the Hudson Valley region, overlooking the possibilities of human agency in landscape theory.

The research is intended to provide a significant new direction in an understudied aspect of Hudson Valley Archaeology. It will explore, through the tools of GIS applications, the utilization of the landscape through the experiences of humanity. It will propose that much of the behavior of the prehistoric, which is often incomplete in the archaeological record of prehistory, can be viewed through human and group agency that determines decision-making. Inferences interpreting movement and the use of visualization will bring into further focus the Snook Kill phase and the deterministic variabilities that influenced decision.

Data from previous research on a large site within the Esopus Drainage containing a significant number of Snook Kill projectile points will be used as a typical case study for the region, as well as verifiable archaeological sites containing Snook Kill projectile points. These sites will be used through GIS analysis of the area from the perspective of a phenomenological study. Discussion will emphasize the landscape as an active variable in the decision-making of the Indigenous people of the Snook Kill phase.

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