Introduction

The Intensification of Rockshelter Use in the Late Woodland/Late Prehistoric Period

“…The salient features of rockshelters include, first, their role as fixed places on the landscape, locations that are widely known and available (Raber, 2008). Second, there is the fact that rockshelters provide ready shelter with little investment of additional energy required.…”

“…The Mykut Rockshelter occupies a critical location (see Figures 13 and 14) overlooking a gap in Terrace Mountain between the Raystown Valley and Little Valley, and thus provides an ideal spot from which to monitor and exploit the movement of game animals, especially deer (Raber, 2008, Raber et al, 2005. 4.25 km 2 within which the occupants of the rockshelter could have obtained deer and other game, as well as a variety of plant foods, most importantly nuts like acorns or walnut and hickory nuts.…”

“…I will assume that we can, in fact, reliably infer population growth from site numbers, while recognizing that there are problems with the use of recorded site numbers or components as a proxy measure of population growth (see Thompson and Turck, 2009 for a recent example of the use of site file data in population trend estimates; cf. Ramenofsky, 1987:14-31; also Raber, 2008;and Wyatt, 2003 for a discussion of Early Woodland populations in Pennsylvania). This hypothesis fails when we compare, period by period, rockshelter components to all site components (see Figures 1 and 2).…”