Honing an Integrated Approach to Geoarchaeological Research in Alluvial Environments of the Lower Ohio River Valley

Summary

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

Identification and interpretation of buried cultural deposits in alluvial settings is improved by an integrated approach that considers the area at an appropriate scale in line with prehistoric land use; applies key underlying concepts; and utilizes multiple methodologies of subsurface investigation, laboratory analysis, and environmental modeling. Success at finer resolution depends on recognition that a "floodplain" represents a range of depositional environments that in the stratigraphic record have a varying potential to contain intact cultural deposits. Key concepts include identification and significance of alluvial veneers, facies analysis, and dynamic modeling of soil -evolution, -facies, -stratigraphy and -geomorphology. Integrated methods and techniques of the approach include the use of LiDAR-based digital elevation models; graphic sediment soil logs; and dark soil color distinctions that reveal stacked and welded upper sola. Drawn from work in progress in the Knob Creek Bottom of the Ohio River Valley, example results show: 1. A previously unrecognized soil complex of three buried soils; 2. Subtle hill slope segment differences in the natural levee environment that have soil-stratigraphic and -morphologic consequences; and, among others, 3. A previously undifferentiated fine grain terrace sediment assemblage that is divisible into six lithofacies with prehistoric settlement, activity, discovery and other archaeological implications.

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): 26220