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Disturbance and its effects on archaeological significance and integrity

Significance and integrity are key concepts for archaeology, and how they are judged is determined by an archaeologist’s perceptions of disturbance. This thesis explicitly considers these concepts and how they relate to evolutionary theory and National Register eligibility. A site with known disturbance was chosen to determine whether it could be judged significant assuming that there was no disturbance. Controlled surface collection, magnetometer survey, excavation and landowner interview data were used to determine whether what made the site significant had been lost due to disturbance. The results indicate that the co-mingling of occupations in the plow zone normally would have prevented the site from being determined eligible. However, because of the clusters of Gulf Formational-period diagnostics and intact Early Archaic midden, the site was determined significant. If future work were to be performed, occupation-based work focusing on the artifact clusters and the Archaic midden is recommended.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:MSSTATE/oai:scholarsjunction.msstate.edu:td-2544
Date06 August 2011
CreatorsKennedy, Jason Alan
PublisherScholars Junction
Source SetsMississippi State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceTheses and Dissertations

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