The Stratton Mill Creek Site: Deciphering a Landscape Feature in the Upper Susquehanna River Valley

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Byways to the Past: An American Highway Archaeology Symposium" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Public Archaeology Facility at Binghamton University has conducted CRM on transportation projects in New York State for over 50 years. Our archaeological investigations have discovered a full range of sites from the ubiquitous (lithic scatters, historic sheet middens) to the extraordinary (deeply stratified sites, ritual blade production areas). All have contributed new information to our knowledge of the past. This paper will focus on an example of the extraordinary – a large precontact ditch feature filled with artifacts and burned debris – and its potential to document a previously unknown ritual landscape along the Susquehanna River in Broome County, New York. This discovery during a NYSDOT project and the consultations involved in its interpretation have produced multiple (sometimes contradictory) opinions about its function. The undisputed conclusion is that this feature adds a new dimension to the commonly accepted precontact context, promotes future debates, and will contribute to a sparse database on such features in the Susquehanna Watershed. In this time of challenges to the Section 106 process and questioning the value of archaeology, it is important to broadcast how transportation archaeology adds valuable information not already known to the history of peoples long gone and those still living.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Byways to the Past: An American Highway Archaeology Symposium   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23572