I'm writing the plan to excavate a site in southern Delaware on the Murderkill River, not too far from Dealware Bay. Big 7 acre area on slightly higher ground above the marshy river margin. Testing showed it was occupied repeatedly from 2,000 BC -AD 1600, likely by small groups for short periods for what we call "resource procurement and/or processing tasks" Pretty light density of stone artifacts, but a fair number of tools (projectile point/knives, scrapers, flake tools, abraders, shaft shaft straighteners, flake tools, bifaces. Also, lots of problematic features - pits, visible as stains under the plowzone. Not clearly hearths or storage pits, etc. Quite a few ceramics too, groundstone, and steatite. Steatite was used in these parts for bowls prior to intro of ceramics about 1000BC. eight diff. ceramic styles.
Usually, when you have lower densities of stone tools, wtih some points, you don't see the density we have of other tools, features, adn ceramics. What were they doing? they guy that wrote the testing report (another company) wrote that the clusters of flakes, with densities of 20-50 per meter square around the feature stains were "lithic redution stations" I think thats pretty silly. Jamie, how many little pieces of stone do you get around you when you are banging rocks?
The area to be impacted by a new highway inerchange is smaller than the 7 acres, actually about 7800 square meters. To find out whats up I figure to dig 272 meter square excavation units and then strip the topsoil off most of the site to get the features. thenn specialized studies like C14 dating, microscoping use wear analysis of the tools, protein residue analysis, starch grain analysis, lithic sourcing (mostly jasper - from where?)
Any ideas?
Dave
