1. Description of the Project
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
1. DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT Delaware Department of A large-scale sensitivity survey by Transportation plans to alter the highway University of Delaware archreologists, now entrances to Dover Air Force Base, as part of housed at the State Historic Preservation the Delaware Route 1 project. As a federal Office (Figure 1), identifies much of the undertaking, the project is subject to Section project area as having a high likelihood of 106 of the National Historic Preservation containing prehistoric sites. This set of maps Act. does not pinpoint expected site locations; instead, it identifies areas where a site might DelDOT engaged Edward F. Heite, of Heite Consulting, Camden, Delaware, to be found, if other factors are present. These factors include nearby water, well-drained conduct a Phase IA investigation of the soil, and a location on the edge of a resource proposed new roadways and related area, such as a floodplain. Where these construction. factors are present in a high-probability area, The project area consists of the prehistoric sites are likely to be found on the immediate vicinity of the intersection of most prominent or most elevated landform. Route 113 and County Road 357, the Since the project area is nearly dead Lebanon Road. flat, without geographical features and relatively far from water, there is no obvious LEVEL OF AND REASON FOR SURVEY "focal point" on which to expect a The present investigation is part of the concentration of prehistoric activity. ongoing planning process connected with The Phase IA investigation was Delaware Route 1. therefore directed toward identifying A map prepared in 1868 (Figure 2) documented or suspected historic-period showed several farmsteads in the general resources in and around the project area. vicinity (Beers 1868). Farms in the immediate project area were identified by GOALS FOR THE INVESnGAnON Beers as belonging to such well-known This is a report of a Phase IA study, personalities as Gustavus George Logan, which can be the first step in a Phase I grandson of John Dickinson. Other survey. Phase IA is a background study, properties in the vicinity included Elm designed to equip fieldworkers with Cottage, owned by heirs of Isaac Harrington, information that will be .needed for J. D. Kimmey's Cherry Dale, and D. C. Hoffecker's Troy farm, and properties conducting a Phase IB reconnaissance survey. owned by the locally prominent Wharton, Budd, and Postles families. The purpose of any Phase I survey is to identify all cultural resources that survive A previous study (Dames and Moore in the study area. It is not ordinarily the 1993) indicated the existence of several purpose of a Phase I survey to assess cultural resources in the immediate vicinity of significance. Phase I field strategy, therefore, the proposed intersection improvement. is designed to cover as much territory as The present Phase IA project was possible, recovering small but meaningful designed to locate and more precisely identify samples from as many micro-environments the features noted by Dames and Moore, and and potential resource areas as possible. to locate any other cultural resources that If a Phase I strategy produces might exist in the project's immediate information that can be used to determine vicinity. significance, this information is treated as an unanticipated bonus. 1 The likelihood of finding buried prehistoric The Phase II strategy is defined as horizons is, therefore, slender (Soil whatever is necessary to determine the Conservation Service 1971). significance of the property, in terms of the National Register. PREVIOUS ARCHJEOLOGICAL WORK GEOGRAPHY AND ENVIRONMENT Two recent archreological surveys have touched upon the project area. Dames The project area lies in the coastal and Moore, Inc., completed a Phase IA plain, near the edge of tide marshes. Its archreological assessment and predictive location, at the drainage divide of a "neck" of model of the entire installation in December land, is one of the more favored agricultural 1993 (Dames and Moore 1993). situations in coastal Delaware. Dames and Moore identified several Delaware's "necks" are long fingers cultural resources in the immediate vicinity of of well-drained land, extending eastward to the proposed construction, as follows Delaware Bay. Their north and south limits No. Name Dates a/maps showing this are marked by tidal streams, which once were 14 Dr. J. G. Baker 1868 trafficways. St. Jones Neck is bordered on 44 ..G. G. Logan 1859 the north by Little River and on the southwest 42 ..A. Lofland 1859 by St. Jones River. Smaller tributaries of 59 ..unlabelled 1899 1936 60 ..unlabelled 1888 1936 these streams, with their marshy floodplains, 61 ..unlabelled 1899 1936 funnel the road system down the spine of the 90 ..unlabelled 1899 neck. The project area is located on this spine 91 ..unlabelled 1899 of well-drained land between drainages. This abundance of different labels for Two historic roads intersect a short identical resources reflects the hazards distance east of the project area. The older of inherent in trying to correlate old maps these was the "Bay Road" from Dover to created to different scales and to different Kitts Hummock. This road probably standards, without the benefit of professional developed during the late seventeenth century evaluations. Several "unlabelled" sites clearly as a route from the Neck to the courthouse at are the same as named properties, but the Dover. The part of the Bay Road that passes Dames and Moore maps are so crude that through Dover Air Force Base is more accurate determinations cannot be recently known as Route 113. determined. A second general survey, by The other road is newer. It connected MAAR Associates, still is in draft (Payne Little Creek Landing with Florence, or 1994). Barker's Landing, on the St. Jones. When In connection with the present State bridges were built at these places during the Route 1 project, several studies have been nineteenth century, this local road became undertaken. The first of these was a part of a secondary north-south coastal route reconnaissance planning study of the broad that crossed streams at their lowest bridges. It corridor issued in 1984 by the Department of is now known as State Route 9. Transportation (Custer, Jehle, Klatka and The place where these two roads Eveleigh 1984). crossed was called Devil's Hill. The reason A Phase I survey in the right-of-way for this evocative name is not apparent. identified several historic sites near the Soils in the project area are well project area, but none in the impact (Bachman, Grettler, and Custer 1988) drained and productive. They belong to the Sassafras-Fallsington Association, the Phase II studies of historic sites in the favored agriculture ground in the region. selected route included the site of the Charles Dominant soil types are Sassafras sandy loam Kimmey toft (K-6440, 7K-D-119) and and Matapeake silt loam, with 2% to 5% another house (K-493), just north of the slopes. These old and stable soils are unlikely project area (Gretder, Bachman, Custer and to have accumulated during Holocene times. Jamison 1991:235-309). 2 environment for this project area is therefore CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL incompletely defmed. PLANNING BACKGROUND Delaware's "framework of historic context elements" (Ames, Callahan, Herman Time periods applied in Delaware and Siders 1989:21) is arranged according to preservation planning (Herman and Siders a group of 18 themes, ten of which refer to 1986) reflect only feebly the actual history of occupations, such as forestry and Kent County. The state's generalized manufacturing. chronology is: Exploration and frontier settlement 1630-1730 PREHISTORIC BACKGROUND Intensified and durable occupation 1730-1770 People arrived in the Delaware Valley Early industrialization 1770-1830 Industrialization and urbanization 1830-1880 near the end of the last (Wisconsin) Urbanization and suburbanization 1880-1940 glaciation. Glaciers entrapped so much water that the ocean lay fifty miles east of the Only one area of the state, between present Sandy Hook, New Jersey. As the Wilmington and Newark, actually glaciers retreated and the ocean advanced, the experienced these historical periods in exactly project mea's ecology changed. With changes this sequence. In spite of their limited in ecology and population came changes in applicability to one small area, cultural land use, which are reflected in the cultural resource investigations throughout the state record. are subdivided this way for the sake of uniformity. Mammoths, musk ox, horses, caribou, and walrus provided food for dire Locally, other landmark dates are wolf, shon-faced bear, and other predators. appropriate to mark division lines between Man was among the smaller competitors in similar expressions of historical periods: the tundra food chain, but his skills compensated for his physical shortcomings. Initial development Settlement to 1730 Nomadic people of this Paleo-Indian -geriod Intensive and durable occupation 1730-1776 were among the most skilled makers of stone Early national period 1776-1800 Agricultural quiescence 1800-1870 tools in the world. They would travel great Canned tomato era 1870-1940 distances to quarry the best flinty nodules and Military period 1940-present cobbles from which they made exquisite spearpoints, knives, and small tools. These revised time brackets were used to frame the present study. Paleo - Indian hunting - gathering society lasted in the coastal plain until about RELEVANT HISTORIC CONTEXTS 6,500 Be, when the Atlantic climate episode and the Archaic period of prehistory began. Agriculture, and particularly Nonhern hardwood forests had replaced the agricultural tenancy, stand out as the tundra, the ocean had risen, and the climate dominant theme in S1. Jones Neck history. A was warmer. Pleistocene megafauna were context study for tenancy was prepared by replaced by smaller game, which required the University of Delaware Center for different hunting techniques and tools.