Why I think we give TOO much weight to ancient burial practices in dating sites

I was digging at a site near the Mississippi River floodplain last spring. We found a single burial with shell beads and a copper band, so our lead dated the whole site to about 800 AD based on that. But the pottery fragments upslope looked Way older, like Early Woodland or even Late Archaic. I think burials can be intrusive, dug into older layers, making the main site older than the burial. But the other side says the grave goods are too unique to ignore, so they anchor the timeline. Who's right here? Should we trust the burial or the scattered pottery? Has anyone else seen a rich grave mess up a site's dating?

3 comments

3 Comments

lisak2619d ago

Agree with you completely, miles. That pottery gap is way too big to just blame on normal soil mixing. I've seen a similar mess at a site in Indiana where a really fancy burial with shell gorgets was sitting right on top of a much older midden layer. They kept trying to date the whole site to the late Woodland period until someone finally noticed the grave cut was super obvious in the pit profile, just like you said. It sounds like your lead is putting way too much weight on that one rich burial without checking for an intrusive pit. I bet if you get a good look at the soil layers around that grave, you'll see the disturbance.

amy_murphy8517d ago

One thing that saved us at a site in Ohio was taking a core sample right next to the burial. It showed a clear color change in the soil about 10 inches down that matched the fill from the grave. That one sample stopped us from dating the whole site wrong.

miles_sanchez19d agoMost Upvoted

Way older, like Early Woodland or even Late Archaic"? Man, that's a big jump. I mean, finding pottery that old sitting upslope while your grave goods are dating you to 800 AD... that's a huge time gap to just brush aside. I gotta say, I'm leaning toward your side on this one. A single rich burial with copper and beads sounds like exactly the kind of thing that would get dug into an older surface, especially near a floodplain where layers get mixed up all the time. Did you guys do any soil profile work to check for that intrusive pit feature? I've seen a similar thing happen at a site in Missouri where a fancy burial totally threw off the site's date until someone realized the grave cut was obvious in the wall profile but nobody looked for it.