The Hidden Record: Soil-Geomorphic Landscapes and Settlement Archaeology in the Middle Ohio River Valley

It has been widely documented that a significant fraction of Archaic period occupations are buried in Holocene alluvial and colluvial landforms in the Midwest and Midsouth. Acknowledging this fact, there is also a recognition that biases are likely to exist in any attempt to develop a regional account of Archaic period settlement strategies based solely on the surface archaeological record (e.g., Wiant et al. 1983; Bettis and Hajic 1995; Stafford 1994). Yet to what extent does this caveat also apply to the late prehistoric record? Recent geoarchaeological studies in the Lower Ohio River valley have identified substantial tracts of late Holocene and very recent post-settlement alluvium that bury Woodland and later prehistoric occupations. Appreciable biases are, therefore, likely to affect regional settlement studies in this region for the Woodland period. Such biases have generally not be taken into consideration in analysis of settlement distributions.