Fieldnotes
An Archaeology and CRM Blog
October 9 is Leif Erikson Day. It has been since 1964 when congress approved it and President Johnson proclaimed it (it is a federal “observance”, not a federal holiday). Leif Erikson Day usually passes relatively unnoticed where I live in New York State, although I imagine things are a bit different in Minnesota and other places around the upper Midwest.
In describing and interpreting the results of her investigation of the Goldkrest Site near Albany, New York, archaeologist Lucianne Lavin (2004) referred to the radiocarbon dating of burned soil patches with associated charcoal as evidence of forest clearing through the use of fire. This evidence was found near the transition between soil strata that indicated a stabilizing landscape about AD 1000. The implication of this information is that as floods became less frequent and less violent due to changes in the Hudson River channel; this section of the Hudson River floodplain became more attractive for gardening to the ancestors of the Mohican Indians.
