Tuners Falls Gorge Geoarchaeological Investigations: Modeling Landscape and Archaeological Developments within the Connecticut River Valley.

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science Outside the Ivory Tower: Perspectives from CRM" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Tuners Falls Gorge region of the Connecticut River Valley is composed of a dynamic post-glacial alluvial landscape which contains extensive Pleistocene and Holocene deposits as well as an abundance of Pre-Contact archaeological sites spanning the last 12,000 years before present. This paper presents a new geoarchaeological study of the geomorphological formation of the post-glacial alluvial landform in the Turners Falls Gorge region of the Connecticut River Valley using soil and geomorphologic information combined with dating based on radiocarbon samples and temporally diagnostic, cultural artifacts. Previous geoarchaeological studies within this study area have focused on landform development in relation to the location of archaeological sites just above the falls. This study focuses on landforms and sites below the falls. A synthesis of this modern study with past geomorphological or geoarchaeological studies is presented to provide a model of landscape development which can be used to help predict the location and age of archaeological sites both on and buried below the landscape in the Turners Falls Gorge region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Archaeological Science Outside the Ivory Tower: Perspectives from CRM

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23331