Between August 1995 and April 1996, Gray & Pape, Inc., under contract to Woolpert Consultants, LLP, assisted Dayton Power and Light Company in fulfilling their Section 106 responsibilities to mitigate adverse effects to four historic properties at their Stuart Station Generating Plant. Located in Adams County, Ohio, the project comprised 95 acres of land situated on alluvial terraces adjacent to the confluence of Elk Run and the Ohio River.

Investigations consisted of four distinct tasks: (1) documentation of the Holocene landscape; (2) data recovery excavations at prehistoric Site 33Ad123; (3) architectural data recovery of the Watson Family Farmstead; and (4) documentation of the Watson Family Cemetery.

19th Century Watson
Landscape Reconstruction

Mitigation of adverse effects included provisions for the holistic documentation of Holocene ecologies and environmental conditions within the greater project area. Geoarchaeological investigations were conducted with the goals of identifying pertinent landforms, developing a model of landscape formation, assessing the near-surface condition of each landform, curating a deep core sample from each landform, and assessing the buried site potential of each landform. Soil columns were collected to reconstruct past plant and animal communities. All soil columns were correlated to geomorphological baseline data, such that each sample could be identified with specific landscape formation episodes and cultural occupations. The soil columns were archived as a permanent record for future research.

Data recovery investigations included hand-excavation and mechanically scraped blocks. The excavated sample constituted 1% of the total site area. As in situ midden and feature deposits were encountered, their coordinates were entered into a computer-generated site map. Analysis of the vertical and horizontal distribution of the features, lithics, ceramics, and fire-cracked rock defined activity areas for both the Archaic and Woodland periods.