Interpretation of Activity Organization on Wolfpen Ridge: Mass Analysis of Debitage from an Upland Ridgetop in Harrison County, Indiana

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

With an FY-22/23 Historic Preservation Fund (HPF) grant through the Indiana Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology (DHPA) the Applied Anthropology Laboratories (AAL) conducted a Phase Ia archaeological investigation of an upland ridge known as Wolfpen Ridge in Harrison-Crawford State Forest (HCSF) with the assistance of 18 student employees. Our purpose was to further investigate 5 sites documented by Division of Forestry (DoF) archaeologist Alicia Ariens (2004): 12HR599, 12HR600, 12HR622, 12HR623, and 12HR624. Our survey failed to reveal any breaks in the artifact distribution for the sites on the ridgetop (622-624), and resulted in a redefinition of 12HR623 as a 59.2 acre lithic scatter with three distinct activity loci. Survey of 93 acres of ridgetop and 2 rockshelter sites (599 and 600) yielded nearly 8,000 lithic artifacts. The volume of artifacts more than doubled what we could fit within our HPF grant budget. In coordination with DHPA and DoF, AAL developed a mass analysis protocol to more efficiently allow summary and analysis of how this landscape was inhabited by the Indigenous inhabitants of the Ohio Valley. We summarize the functional analyses and conclusions of this analysis and its implications for regional precontact Native history in the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53776