Beneath the Surface: A Ground-Penetrating Radar Study at the Mary Rinn Site (36IN29)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Little is known about the Mary Rinn Site’s cultural affiliation. The site is surrounded by better defined cultural groups such as the Monongahela and the Fishbasket complex. Limited excavations and research revealed evidence of possible housing structures and the trace of a stockade line. Surface collected materials from the Boyer Collection, and field school excavations from IUP have provided a preliminary understanding of the cultural materials at Mary Rinn. This research will improve the temporal and spatial understanding of the Mary Rinn Site (36IN29), located along Crooked Creek in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, by means of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and excavation units. This survey seeks to determine the presence or absence of stratification between two large intersecting circular anomalies discovered by a previous GPR survey. These anomalies raise a question about the timeline of site occupation. To further investigate these anomalies, GPR data collection at tighter transect intervals will target where these large anomalies intersect. The results of the GPR data collection will identify the location of excavation units to determine the presence or absence of stratification at Mary Rinn. Understanding the spatial relationships within the Mary Rinn Site will contribute to the understanding of prehistory in Western Pennsylvania.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25622