attracted to the longer growing season, protection from floods, and better air of hilltops - usually streamlined hills.

The classic colonial New England town - a village on a hilltop surrounding a town green - results from the combination of a desire to farm on high ground, the constraints of landscape, and the social customs of the day. Puritan society placed a high value on the impor-tance of community, putting enormous pressure on its members to live together in a town. One manifestation of this pressure was the virtual requirement that all families attend the meeting house (which is what the Puritans called their churches) each Sunday for services. In those days of poor roads and animal-powered transportation, that usually meant walking. Somehow, enough farmland had to be found to support a town's worth of families, living close enough together so that everyone could easily get to the meeting house - and all on high ground.

The most common solution was to establish towns on top of the

Cutaway of an idealized hilltop town on a streamlined hill, showing the underlying bedrock and glacial till.

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