CORRELATING GEORADAR FACIES TO SUBSURFACE LITHOLOGY: AN APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING THE LATE QUATERNARY HISCOCK SITE, WESTERN NEW YORK STATE

Seasonal excavations at the Hiscock Site, a Late Quaternary basin in western New York State, have produced numerous fossil bones and lithic artifacts. Among the recovered fossils include the remains of Late Pleistocene mastodon, caribou, California condor, and giant beaver. Furthermore, the site has yielded a number of Paleoindian projectile points and utilized bone tools. Due to inherent requirements of the excavations (weather, time, and funding), only a small percentage of the nearly two acre site has been studied. While a fairly large volume of data exists for the paleontology and archaeology components of Hiscock, far less is known about the geomorphology and deglaciation of the site.

This research uses georadar facies as an interpretive geophysical tool to understand the shape and nature of basin sediments at the Hiscock Site. The geology, in this case, is represented by sediment information collected from shallow augering, split-spoon sampling, and direct-push sampling. Additional evidence from the excavated record is also invoked to constrain and support geophysical data. Using nearly 9 km of ground penetrating radar (GPR) profiles, three unique georadar facies can be identified from the Hiscock Site data. Where the subsurface is undocumented, preliminary interpretations of georadar facies rely heavily on the greater body of published work. Sediment sampling is used to test the application of this method at the Hiscock Site.