Eastern Woodlands Household Archaeology Data Project
  • Home
  • About
  • What's New
  • Structures by State/Province
    • Alabama
    • Arkansas
    • Connecticut
    • Delaware
    • Florida
    • Georgia
    • Illinois
    • Indiana
    • Iowa
    • Kentucky
    • Louisiana
    • Maine
    • Maryland
    • Massachusetts
    • Michigan
    • Minnesota
    • Mississippi
    • Missouri
    • New Hampshire
    • New Jersey
    • New York
    • North Carolina
    • Ohio
    • Pennsylvania
    • Rhode Island
    • South Carolina
    • Tennessee
    • Vermont
    • Virginia
    • West Virginia
    • Wisconsin
    • Ontario
    • New Brunswick
    • Nova Scotia and PEI
    • Quebec
  • Database
    • April 2015 (DINAA link test)
    • March 2014
    • February 2014
  • Bibliography
    • Full Bibliography
    • Publications Online
  • More . . .

Late Archaic Structural Remains at the Yellowbush Creek Site, Meigs County, Ohio

5/26/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
A 2010 report by Craig Keener, Kevin Nye, and Joshua Niedermeir (available here) describes excavations at the Yellowbush Creek site (33Ms29), a Late Archaic site in Meigs County, Ohio, dating to the second millennium BC.  Geophysical data collected during Phase II suggested "possible post formations indicative of structures," specifically "circular or arc shaped anomaly patterns" (Keener et al. 2010:5, 15).  Phase II excavations identified a cluster of posts and pit features that suggested the presence of some kind of structure (Keener et al. 2010:15). Phase III investigations exposed an arc of pits around an open area that was suggestive of a structure location (illustration to right, from Keener et al. 2010:16).

I will add a general entry to the database for the Yellowbush Creek site (Structure 2259).  Hopefully discrete structures can be identified there if work is conducted in the future.  The work described by Keener et al. (2010) was carried out by PAST.  I thank Craig Keener for pointing out the publication on the Ohio Archaeological Council webpage.

0 Comments

Possible Early Woodland Structure at the Settler's Ridge Site, Ashland County, Ohio

5/23/2014

2 Comments

 
Picture
"Open" structures (i.e., structures that do not enclose a discrete area) were built and used throughout much of prehistory in eastern North America.  A 2009 paper in North American Archaeologist by Craig Keener, Kevin Nye, and Joshua Niedermier describes a possible Early Woodland "open" structure at the Settler's Ridge site (33-As-32) in Ashland County, Ohio.  Keener et al. (2009:43) suggest that a cluster of posts (highlighted in red in the illustration to the right, modified from Keener et al. 2009:45) may "represent some kind of lean-to, wind break, or partial enclosure" in the central portion of the site.  The deposits at Settler's Ridge date to the first millennium BC and are associated with the Leimbach Phase.  Work at the Settler's Ridge site was performed by Professional Archaeological Services Team, a CRM firm based in Plain City, Ohio.  The structure will be Structure 2258 in the database.

I grew up very near where this site is located.  A word of advice:  watch your speed heading into Jeromesville on US 250.




2 Comments

Late Archaic Post Structure(s) from 33-Mu-29, Muskingum County, Ohio

3/21/2014

0 Comments

 
A 1975 paper by James Morton and Jeff Carskadden in Ohio Archaeologist describes the remains of one or more post structures from a site in Muskingum County, Ohio (Morton and Carskadden 1975).  The outlines of the structure(s) represented by the posts are not particularly clear.  The authors suggest that some of the posts may belong to a circular or semi-circular structure with two central posts (see illustrations below from Carskadden and Morton 1975).  The posts could also mark the location of a large, open structure or several smaller arc-shaped structures.

Neither a name or a number is given for the site in the original paper.  I found the site number 33-Mu-29 associated with the radiocarbon date (I-7604) discussed in the paper in the Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia Radiocarbon Database maintained by Cultural Resource Analysts. 
Picture
0 Comments

Middle-Late Woodland Structures from Zencor Village, Franklin County, Ohio

3/18/2014

0 Comments

 
Daniel Zulandt's M.A. thesis (Zulandt 2010 - available online here) contains plan maps of the 1957 and 1958 excavations at the Zencor Village site (33-Fr-8) in Franklin County, Ohio.  Those excavations exposed the remains of at least three post structures dating to somewhere in the period A.D. 500-1000.  Raymond Baby and colleagues mentioned the existence of these structures in several short papers (e.g., Baby 1971; Baby and Shaffer 1957; Mays and Baby 1958), but with scant details:

"The remains of at least three houses . . . The structures represented by the postmolds were 25 to 36 feet in diameter, with an overlapping wall serving as an entrance.  The postmolds averaged 0.6 feet in diameter and were set in the ground 1.5 feet deep and 2.5 feet apart"
(Baby 1971:196).

The plan maps reproduced by Zulandt (2010:Figures 5, 6, and 7) show the post structures and their relationships to features at the site.  I don't know that these maps were not available elsewhere prior to Zulandt's thesis, but this is the first place I have seen them and I think it is useful to point out their existence. 

I already had an entry for the Zencor Village site in the database.  In the next issues of the database, however, there will be one entry for each structure.  The dimensions of each structure will be estimated from these drawings.
Picture
Figure 7 from Daniel Zulandt's thesis (Zulandt 2010:25), showing remains of structure in Area A' (this will be Structure 2227 in the database).
Picture
Figure 6 from Daniel Zulandt's thesis (Zulandt 2010:24) showing remains of structures in Area B (Structure 670 in the database) and Trench 1 (Structure 2212 in the database).
0 Comments

Middle-Late Woodland Household Remains at the Strait Site, Fairfield County, Ohio

3/4/2014

0 Comments

 
Jarrod Burks' dissertation, entitled Identifying Household Cluster and Refuse Disposal Patterns at the Strait Site: A Third Century A.D. Nucleated Settlement in the Middle Ohio River Valley (Burks 2004), considers how patterns of trash disposal can be used to assess the contemporaneity of residential structures.  Jarrod examines artifact density data from shovel probes in  light of a model of household-level trash disposal developed from ethnoarchaeological data, then compares the results to geophysical and excavation results.  Portions of two structures were exposed.  I have added a listing for the Strait site to the inventory for Ohio, and will include the site in the next version of the Database. 

The Strait site (33-Fa-156-158) is one of only a handful of "Middle Woodland - Late Woodland Transitional" sites in the Database.  Sites of this age (i.e., arguably post-Hopewell, generally associated with projectile points belonging to the Lowe Cluster) are sometimes referred to in the literature as "late Middle Woodland" and other times as "early Late Woodland."  Hence my decision to give them their own category.  These sites represent a time of important change in the organizational structure of settlement during the Woodland period in the Ohio Valley.  Read Jarrod's dissertation to find out more.
Picture
Above:  Artifact cluster interpretations and proposed household clusters at the Strait site (Burks 2004: Figure B.64).
0 Comments

    Author

    Andrew A. White
    aawhite@mailbox.sc.edu

    Archives

    January 2016
    September 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    January 2015
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014

    Categories

    All
    Crowdfunding
    DINAA
    Early Woodland
    Florida
    Georgia
    Illinois
    Late Archaic
    Late Woodland
    Maryland
    Michigan
    Middle Archaic
    Middle Woodland
    Mississippian
    Nunavut
    Ohio
    Ontario
    Tennessee
    Virginia

    RSS Feed

    Enter your email address to receive updates to this section of the EWHADP:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.