Licking County Landscapes and the Distribution of
Prehistoric Occupation Sites
Tod
Frolking (Department of Geology, Denison University, Granville, Ohio, USA)
Laura Harris Symposium on Native American Culture,
Denison University, Granville, Ohio, USA
13 April 2005
Licking
County, Ohio was partially covered by the Scioto Lobe during the last
Wisconsinan Glaciation. As the Scioto Lobe moved southward, its eastern
margin squeezed eastward. So, ice moved from west to east through Licking
County during the Wisconsinan Glaciation. Till plains in western Licking
County are usually clay-rich, resulting in not-well-drained soils. The
eastern side of Licking County has a mix of surface materials.
The
last glacial maximum was at 18-20 k.y.
At
18 k.y., there were only a few upland mounds near Newark exposed above the ice
in Licking County, as the glaciers began to melt. Everything else was
ice.
By
16.5 k.y., the ice was melting away & stagnating. A lobe of ice was
present in the upper Raccoon Valley, and an outwash valley train was downstream
of it.
Glaciers
are very dirty places - lots of sediments, lots of slumping of debris.
They are also dusty places. In the winter, when melting stops, wind blows
dust along.
By
15.5 k.y., all ice is gone from Licking County and Franklin County. A few
remnant ice blocks (kettles) in the Raccoon Creek Valley.
Now,
there’s a deeper fluvial channel carved into glacial sediments - it's a wider
modern floodplain cutting through outwash material. We’ve also got rugged
uplands now - they show little impact from the ice. Uplands have
till-mantled ridges.
Sherm
Byers of the Burning Tree Golf Course found a mastodon in 1989 after hiring a
backhoe to scoop out peat to modify his golf driving surface. The back of
the skull was found/hit first - the backhoe operator felt resistance. The
Burning
Tree Mastodon is a ~complete skeleton. Tod Frolking helped to
excavate this specimen. This mastodon dates to 11.5 k.y., based on woody
material recovered from near the bones. Intestinal contents were
recovered. Bone cut markings were observed. The Burning Tree
Mastodon’s environment was an open spruce woodland with ponds. The time of year
of death was determined, as was the mastodon’s diet (not spruce, as regarded
previously). The mastodon was butchered, and buried in a winter pond as a
cache - determined based on the array of bones - bones were in 4 groups.
So, there were people in Licking County at least by then - Paleo-Indians (? to
10,000 years).
The
end-Pleistocene/early Holocene extinction was due to human activity - the same
extinction is seen in Australia, occurring once people arrived. Note that
the animals of this extinction survived all previous Pleistocene Ice Age
changes.
Smoot
Lake, south of Utica, is the only natural lake in Licking County - a kettle
lake. It has been cored to obtain sedimentary cores. See Ogden &
Hay (1967) - did pollen abundance analysis in Torren’s Bog, near Smoot Lake.
Can
see a big change in pollen at 11-12 k.y. - spruce
was briefly replaced by Pinus
(pines), followed by Quercus
(oak) & Carya
(hickory) dominating at ~10 k.y. to now. Then, modern clear-cutting
resulted in a spike in weed pollen.
Forest
canopies dissipate energy from storms - water drips to ground. So, ground
erosion is zero to near-zero in such settings. So, little landscape
change once forests developed after glaciers melt away. Once the
landscape stabilized, got vertical percolation of water + leaf settling,
resulting in the development of soil horizons.
A
horizon of a soil can develop quickly, in just 10-20 years.
The
B horizon of a soil develops slowly - over 1000s and 1000s of years; even after
100,000 yrs., B horizons are still developing.
The
outwash terrace of Raccoon Creek Valley is well-drained & flat, resulting
in good soils.
Get
perennial springs at the Logan-Cuyahoga Formation boundary, along the flanks of
the hills straddling the Raccoon Valley, near the top of the outwash
terrace. Springs are common around Granville, including on Denison
University campus.
The
Munson Spring site, in Munson Hollow, on east side of Granville (just east of
Jones Road, northern side of Newark-Granville Road) is now covered by a housing
development. Artifacts were found there at 20-30 cm below the
surface. But, the soils there have demonstrably had no deposition of
material since ~10 k.y. How did artifacts get submerged in soil?
Involution model - soil bioturbation results in artifact sinking - earthworms
churn soil - fine sediments cover artifacts - worms can’t move flint. Ants
and earthworms can bring a tremendous amount of fine material to the surface -
this has been observed.
Alligator
Mound in Granville, Ohio was built ~820-840 years ago, apparently - not built
by the Woodland culture as traditionally interpreted. If it is
820-840 years old, the Ft. Ancient culture was responsible. Alligator
Mound, interpreted to represent a panther, is one of only two effigy mounds in
all of Ohio.
