Planned impacts from this proposed project include habitat restoration, channel reestablishment, vegetation plantings, new roads, and sports field construction. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District, in partnership with the City of Fort Worth and the Tarrant County Water District. This report presents the findings of the survey of 75 acres and the excavation of 28 cubic meters of site 41TR198 (Crooked Oxbow Site) within the Riverside Oxbow Project sponsored by the U.S. We point out that (1) shell makes up less than 20 percent of the volume of the mound with which we are most familiar (15Bt5, Carlston Annis), and makes up almost no percentage at all in some mounds that do have many burials (for example, the Ward site contained 433 burials but almost no shell) (2) there is no evidence to suggest that mollusk shells were brought in from elsewhere or mounded up in association with human burials (3) there is much evidence in the form of sandstone (fire-cracked rock), hearths, lithic, shell, antler, and bone tool detritus, and wood charcoal to suggest normal habitation debris, rather than burial ceremonialism (4) many burials were placed outside or below shell deposits. Claassen's hypotheses have been addressed by Marquardt and Watson (Chapter 6 here), Hensley (1991Hensley (, 1994, and Crothers (1999 see also Morey and Crothers 1998 Morey et al. In the 1990s, Cheryl Claassen (1991Claassen (, 1992Claassen (, 1996a stimulated a reconsideration of the function of Archaic shell mounds, suggesting that the Green River mounds were not simply middens resulting from periodic habitation, but instead were primarily burial mounds. With this point of confusion resolved, we plan subsequent research to expand the data base at Haynes and other shell-bearing sites, focusing on overall palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, taphonomic processes, site distributions in relation to geomorphological contexts, and dietary analysis. Supporting data, especially from pre-impoundment survey maps, suggest that the stretches of river in question included suitable habitat for the mussel species that dominate the middens. On the other hand, geoarchaeological discussions have been misconstrued through literal interpretation of generalizations that apply at a broad, geological scale. On the one hand, an analysis of mussels from the Haynes site (15BT11) supports a previous reconstruction of stream conditions based on malacological data from the nearby Carlston Annis site (15BT5). In this paper we show that the notion of a contradiction between malacological and geoarchaeological data is false. This apparent contradiction has contributed to discussions that question the traditionally presumed dietary role of the shellfish, positing instead, for example, that shell could have been transported long distances in order to construct mortuary monuments. Specifically, archaeological mussel assemblages have been interpreted to suggest shallow, swiftly flowing sections of river near the sites, whereas geoarchaeological discussions have been interpreted to indicate a deep, sluggish channel. One area of concern is the relationship between malacological and geoarchaeological data. 6000–3000bp) shell midden sites along the lower Green River, many issues remain unresolved. Despite much progress in the analysis of Middle and Late Archaic Period (c.
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