Mitigation and Management in the Context of Climate Change at Three Historic Properties on the Great Plains, USA

Summary

Under the terms of a Memorandum of Agreement, a professional archaeologist and land-survey crew annually visit 16 historic properties within the Area of Potential Effects of the Maple River Flood Control Dam to document site conditions. All are archaeological sites that could be subjected to seasonal temporary inundation during spring runoff and/or periodic non-winter storm events. Since the "dry dam" first became operational during spring melt in 2007, extreme flood events occurred in 2009 and 2011 resulting in slope failures and erosion at three of the sites. Mitigation measures were implemented at the 32CS0101 (Shea) and 32CS4478 (Sprunk) sites - both Plains Village Tradition hillforts listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) – and at a third site - 32CS4499 (unnamed), a Woodland habitation eligible for NRHP listing. Corrective engineering actions focused on site slopes and their adjacent streambanks to reconstruct, stabilize, and revegetate the exposed and failing embankments. Initially, these mitigation measures were hampered by significant challenges within the context of climate change, namely, major spring floods in 2009 and 2011, and moderate-to-severe droughts in 2012 and 2013. In subsequent years, significant progress has been made as environmental conditions have been conducive to long-term embankment stabilization.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20499