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Early and Middle Archaic

National Register Eligibility Criteria

For a site to be eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places because of one or more significant Early and Middle Archaic component(s), it must contain at least one component containing stone tools, debitage, features, floral subsistence, and/or faunal remains that can be certainly identified as deriving from the Early and Middle Archaic.  That identification may be based upon a diagnostic biface type, which is the traditional method of identifying "culture" in Northeastern prehistory.  However, because the Gulf of Maine  Archaic minimized use of stone bifaces, component identification may also be based upon other material culture attributes (which include ground stone or quartz uniface tool types and/or a suite of lithic raw material as evidenced by debitage) and a chronological date based upon association with a radiocarbon dated feature or a relative date on a stratum in a sealed alluvial context.  The component identified as Early and Middle Archaic must be clearly separable from other components on the basis of horizontal patterning or vertical stratigraphy.  Mortuary components clearly identifiable to the period are eligible under the same criteria.  Moreover, any site with an Early and Middle Archaic component that is demonstrably able to make an extraordinary contribution to any of the Research Significance Themes presented above is significant.  Because of the general scarcity of diagnostic bifaces for the Early and Middle Archaic, the primary factor in judging National Register eligibility must be component purity and component identification to the Early and Middle Archaic.