GEOMORPHIC SETTING AND PREHISTORIC OCCUPATION OF THE SOUTHERN CUYAHOGA RIVER VALLEY, NE OHIO: OBSERVATIONS FROM A GIS DATABASE

The prehistoric record of the southern Cuyahoga River Valley (hereafter, CRV) in northeastern Ohio is grossly underrepresented in printed reports, although many sites have been registered at the State of Ohio Historic Preservation Office. We have reviewed and compiled these site locations in a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) database to examine the distribution of 79 archaeological sites in the study region, located north of the city of Akron and south of the town of Peninsula. Using digitized soil data to generate a geomorphic data layer, we assessed the spatial and temporal distribution of archaeological sites among the major documented landscape components in the southern CRV. As a foundation for better understanding the records of human activity within the region, our GIS demonstrates some associations between geomorphic setting and site temporality. Paleoindian sites only occur on Wisconsin cut terraces and in upland interfluve settings. Archaic period sites occur most frequently on Wisconsin cut terraces and interfluve settings. Woodland period and Historic sites occur in most geomorphic settings. The quality of inferences drawn from our GIS analyses reflects the limitations of our initial input data, particularly in regard to positional errors. To quantify and rectify these kinds of errors requires extensive fieldwork and site-specific interpretations of depositional environments and associated cultural materials. Modeling the CRV landscape at a regional scale can help forecast what surveys can expect to find and where they will be successful, thereby allowing geoarchaeologists to develop more efficient (e.g. stratified sampling) and more successful (e.g. removing sediment overburden) surveys.