In conjunction with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pittsburgh District and Clarion University, GRA developed a paleo-environmental and landscape model of a deeply buried site in the Upper Ohio Valley.
This multi-year interdisciplinary project stressed geomorphological coordination with archeologists in the careful excavation of the sediments and soils sealing in the evidence of nearly 10,000 years of human activity along the river. GRA provided daily field monitoring and interpretation of the complicated natural and cultural deposits, as well as laboratory analyses required for in-depth analysis of site history.
At Leetsdale, initial deep testing revealed deposits in a variety of alluvial sediments and soils to depths of >5m. Based on the depth and spatial distributions of artifacts and their related alluvial sediments, a preliminary model of archeological sensitivity segregated those portions of the terrace that contained the richest archeological assemblages before and after 5000 B.P.
