The Design, Application and Evaluation of an Effective Subsurface Sampling Strategy: Detecting Holocene Knapping Floors in Southeastern Australia

ABSTRACT

Subsurface sampling programs are regularly employed to detect buried archaeological material in open landscapes. Rarely, however, is the effectiveness of the sampling program assessed through subsequent excavation. Here, an optimal subsurface testing strategy is designed using Kintigh’s simulation approach to locate prehistoric knapping floors and is applied to an open landscape in southeastern Australia. Several prehistoric knapping floors were discovered using this strategy and nine of these were subsequently excavated to establish their diameters, densities, and density distributions. The results indicate that there is a high level of divergence between test-pitting data and excavation data. This demonstrates that test-pit data cannot be assumed to provide an accurate representation of site characteristics. It follows that an empirical validation of site characteristics through subsequent excavation is needed before a meaningful evaluation of the effectiveness of a sampling strategy can be conducted.

KEYWORDS:

• Subsurface sampling
• simulation
• test-pit
• knapping floors
• Lake George (Australia)

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under grant LP140100911, an Australian Postgraduate Award, and funding from the Carlyle Greenwell Research Fund. Invaluable fieldwork assistance was also provided by Wilfred and Carol Shawcross. The author would like to thank the land owners, the traditional land owners, and Infigen Energy for their assistance in undertaking this study, as well as Peter Hiscock, Keith Kintigh, Amy Tabrett and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback.

Notes on contributor

Amy Mosig Way (M.A. 2012, The Australian National University) is a Ph.D. candidate at The University of Sydney, Australia. Her principal research interests include landscape archaeology, hunter-gatherer technology, and archaeological theory and practice.

ORCID

Amy Mosig Way http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8896-1815