CORRESPONDENCE - 75A SEXLINGER FARMHOUSE

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sites, as evidenced by overlapping artifact areas. Boundary Justification: The nominated area (geographic) of the floodplain includes the majority of four known collecting areas. The artifacts and features within the polygonal area demonstrate the presence of Late Woodland and Contact Period occupations, on which the statement of significance is based. Through a series of fortunate events surrounding a recent flooding episode of the river, the archeological remains of a large Late Woodland- Contact Period village were exposed in this area of the floodplain. The exposed domestic features and artifact concen- trations were carefully recorded by amateur archeologists, but only within the areas fortuitously stripped of alluvium by the flood. Subse- quently, the property owner inten- tionally refilled this area, thus recreat- ing a deep, featureless plain. Without intensive archeological testing below the 1 -3 meters of alluvium and fill above the prehistoric occupation zone, it is impossible to define the site boundaries on the basis of presence or absence of cultural materials. In fact, by comparison to the east bank of the river, which has been more inten- sively surface collected, it appears that the distribution of prehistoric cultural materials is almost continu- ous across miles of land. Case 15. Continuous Artifact Distri- bution: Prehistoric Camp Site Over- looking an Estuary: The site is located on a prominent hill on the western side of the mouth of a cove overlook- ing the southern half of a marsh. Concentrations were delimited all along the base of the hill (the base is at approximately the same location as the abandoned road shown as a dashed line on Figure 10). Concentra- tions also occur on its eastern and northeastern slopes, both of which include sizable areas that are nearly level. The site is in mainly open fields at present with thick shrubs in wet areas, scattered evergreens, and broad leafed forest undergrowth vegetation. Two kinds of test units — shovel tests and excavation units —were used to define the site boundary and concentrations within the site. The density per .25 cubic meters of the number of lithics, grams of shell, and fire- cracked rock were calculated for each unit and mapped. Density contour lines using the median and 75th percentile values were drawn on large scale maps for each of the site areas. These lines were used as boundaries between site and non -site areas and among concentrations within the site. Boundary Description: The site is bounded by the marsh on the south and east, and by the density of artifact distributions (boundary established at the 75th percentile isopleth) on the north and the west. Boundary Justification: An essential step for analyzing archeo- logical remains on a regional basis is the careful identification of compa- rable units. This example establishes such units by using an explicit defini- tion of two concepts —the site and the concentration. "Site" as used here refers to a bounded area within which artifact concentrations occur. Site boundaries were set along contour lines of artifact density, interpolated from shovel test and excavation unit data. In this context, sites are areas that contained concentration of artifact deposits. These concentra- tions represent areas bounded by contour lines representing a certain density within the site of one or more kinds of archeological materials e.g., lithics, shell or fire - cracked rock remains. The size, structure, shape, and contents, as well as other charac- teristics of each concentration, can then be investigated. Al