Remote Sensing’s Capacity to Identify Shell Deposits at the Silver Glen Springs Complex, Florida

Summary

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

Landscape archaeology is fundamentally directed towards understanding the intersection of natural and constructed places, and their reciprocal influence on history. Mounds constructed of earth or shell have been the predominant focus of Southeastern archaeologist for generations. Subsequently, the spaces outside the bounds of mounded places have not been adequately studied. Remote sensing equipment such as: ground penetrating radar, magnetic susceptibility gradiometer, and electrical resistance meters, as well as coring, and test unit excavations were utilized during the 2018 field season at the Silver Glen Springs Complex in Northeastern Florida. The use of combined remote sensing, coring, and excavations can provide the resolution needed to investigate the subsurface architecture and patterning of the non-mounded spaces. Geophysics’ capacity to identify archaeological deposits without the use of destructive excavation has been useful, but methodological concerns persist in its ability to clearly identify subsurface variations in composition, like pit features. This poster delves into the efficacy of multiple geophysics equipment’s ability to identify discrete shell deposits and sub-surface architectural elements by comparing the remote sensing data with coring and test unit excavations. It is through this analysis that a protocol is developed for identifying shell bearing middens and other subsurface elements from geophysics data.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23544