3rd Iteration of the Archaeological Resources Survey Plan for Naval Support Activity Crane (T.O 1251), Martin County, Indiana: Geoarchaeological Reconnaissance and Coring in the Boggs and Turkey Creek Drainages: Final Report

Abstract

At the request of Naval Support Activity Crane (NSA Crane), Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology Office of Cultural Resource Management (GBL-OCRM) conducted work for the third iteration of the Archaeological Resource Survey Plan (ARSP) implementation at NSA Crane in Martin and Greene Counties (Delivery Order 1251). Fieldwork for the 3rd Iteration took place over a period of eight months in 2004 and 2005. The purpose of the ARSP is to provide NSA Crane with a tool to assist with cultural resource management under Section 110 of the National Historic Preservation Act (16 U.S.C. 470). NSA Crane, a 63,000 acre naval installation, is located in southern Indiana, predominately in Martin County, within the Crawford Upland physiographic province, an unglaciated area of steeply sloping hills and valleys bordered to the west by the Wabash Lowland and to the east by the Mitchell Plain. Characterized as a maturely dissected western sloping plateau, the region possesses a highly developed dendritic drainage system, a variety of topographic features, and abundant stream valleys. The specific goals of the third iteration seek to build on the previous archaeological studies by collecting geologic and geochronology information needed to better understand the depositional history of the Boggs watershed and to identify buried Holocene landforms with the potential to contain preserved prehistoric or historic archaeological sites. Although coring did not locate any archaeological deposits, three baseline dates were obtained for the Boggs drainage that span a period of almost 17,000 years. Using a combination of existing datasets and new ones created specifically for the 3rd iteration, a probability model was constructed for buried archaeological deposits within the Boggs and Turkey Creek drainages.