A Geoarchaeological Investigation of an Early Holocene Soil Feature at the Page-Ladson Site (8JE591)

Summary

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

Florida State’s 2022 field school excavated into Page-Ladson’s stratigraphic unit (SU) 5, a stratum that spans the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene with Bolen period occupation, and exposed a sediment feature. It was unclear if the feature was cultural or natural. The soil transition was diffuse but there was an increase in charcoal and faunal content. Limestone and wood were ambiguously scattered. Several Late Paleo/Early Archaic projectiles surrounded the feature. This research reconstructs the environmental context of this early Holocene feature and associated SU and determines its cultural or natural origins. Several geoarchaeological methods were employed to identify whether this soil feature is the result of a cultural or natural process with two possible conclusions: the feature is a hearth or a natural water feature. The materials around the soil feature are reminiscent of a hearth, but no materials were visibly thermally altered. An alternative explanation is that the arrangement of materials are the result of a debris line at the margins of a pond. The following methods were applied: δ15N and δ13C isotopic analysis, Loss on Ignition, Magnetic Susceptibility, pollen analysis, and faunal, charcoal, and lithic distribution. The results indicate that this is a cultural burn feature.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40305.0