What Lies Beneath: Underwater Ground Penetrating Radar Survey of the Inundated Liebman Site, an Early Paleoindian Site in Lebanon, Connecticut.

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Liebman Site (71-31) is an Early Paleoindian site preserved beneath Lake Williams, a ~270-acre lake initially created by 19th century milling operations of Bartlett Brook in Lebanon, Connecticut. Originally discovered by John Parkos and excavated by John Pfeiffer in the 1990s when water levels were reduced, the site is generally inaccessible to traditional investigations. These excavations yielded 85 artifacts including 15 tools, comprising endscrapers, pièce esquillèes, utilized flakes, and a fluted point base. The fluted point base is consistent with a Crowfield point type, indicative of an Early Paleoindian occupation of the site. To better contextualize the stratigraphy and environmental setting of the site, we surveyed the general site area via ground penetrating radar (GPR) using a real-time kinematic (RTK) GPS encoded 350 MHz antenna and SIR-4000 with the antenna situated on a raft and surveyor on a paddleboard. Data were collected in transects perpendicular to relevant landforms, which revealed the presence of a stable floodplain and buried paleo-channel, as well as the 19th century channel of Bartlett Brook. Our survey demonstrates the utility of underwater GPR survey, which provides a cost-effective method for assessing site stratigraphy of inundated archaeological sites in freshwater environments.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39923.0