ELECTRICAL RESISTIVITY INVESTIGATION OF THE DELAWARE VILLAGE SITE, SOUTHWEST MISSOURI

Although they are one of the best known American Indian tribes, the Delaware/Lenape people are poorly known in the late 18th century and early 19th century as some groups negotiated land deals and slowly moved west. Their village sites along the Upper White River in Indiana remain elusive despite well-tested identification strategies coupled with information provided in historical documents. The archaeological site of Delaware Village in southwestern Missouri, also known as 23CN1, was briefly inhabited during the 1820's . An archaeological survey during the late 1990s, while searching for evidence of trading posts of famous traders like William Gilliss and William Marshall, located evidence of the Delaware villages themselves. Since this time, three archaeological field seasons have focused on the resources at that site. The identification of related or additional sites related to the Delaware occupation turned to subsurface geophysical techniques, specifically DC electrical resistivity, where traditional archaeological survey methods proved ineffectual. During the Spring of 2005, an electrical resistivity survey was conducted on an unsampled portion of 23CN1 in order to find anomalies relating to cultural features. Because a semi-subterranean cabin was excavated in a previous field season, it was especially hoped that electrical resistivity could locate another house feature or related food storage or trash pits. So, five profiles of electrical resistivity data were collected with stations one meter apart using a schlumberger array with four readings taken at each station. Prominent were low resistivity anomalies that were naturally related to the karst topography, other anomalies revealed the location of a hearth filled with charcoal, fired native-made ceramics, and even evidence of previous archaeological survey.