Historic and Recent Investigations of the Geology and Paleontology of Vicksburg National Military Park

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Vicksburg Is the Key: Recent Archaeological Investigations and New Perspectives from the Gibraltar of the South" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Vicksburg National Military Park (VICK) was established in 1899 to commemorate the 47-day siege of Vicksburg, which ended in a Confederate surrender on July 4, 1863. VICK’s significant history extends even further than the Civil War as the park contains evidence of life from the fossil record. While the oldest exposed geologic formations in VICK belong to the eponymously named Oligocene-age Vicksburg Group, gravels sourced from older Paleozoic rocks upstream in the Mississippi River system can also be found below the topmost Quaternary sediments (mostly comprised of Pleistocene loess that characterizes the park’s bluffs). Multiple intersections exist between the geology and paleontology at VICK and the archeological record. Jasper effigy beads from the Middle Archaic Period represent the earliest known human interactions with the local geology. Later, effigy pipes from regional Mississippian sites have been linked to a Vicksburg Group formation exposed in the park due to fossils identified in the material. Famous historical scientists including Charles Lesueur, Charles Lyell, and John Wesley Powell also studied the geology and paleontology of Vicksburg. In 2022, a field inventory of VICK’s fossils was conducted, and the findings, as well as historical narrative interwoven with these resources, were summarized in a comprehensive report.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Vicksburg Is the Key: Recent Archaeological Investigations and New Perspectives from the Gibraltar of the South   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41514.0