Document Type
Report
Publication Date
1988
Archaeological Report Number
18
Abstract
During the 1987 field season, a research team from Western Michigan University conducted Phase II investigations at the Walters 1 and Cupp 5 sites in the Middle St. Joseph River Valley to determine the eligibility of these sites far listing in the National Register of Historic Places. Discovered during a Phase I survey of this area in 1986, these two sites were among 10 of 87 previously unrecorded sites to which ''high priority'' assignments were given (Cremin and Quattrin 1987).
Following intensive walk-over survey of the ''well fitted'' fields in May by an all volunteer group for purposes of precisely delineating site area, the project research team returned to the sites in late June For three weeks of Phase II study. Employing standard test excavation procedures, together with some shovel testing on Walters 1, the team opened 227 ''windows'' into the sites in hopes of recovering a sample of the artifactual material present and ascertaining whether there existed any site integrity. Regardless of our best efforts, we observed neither stratigraphy nor significantly preserved context on either site; observed archaeological context was confined to a single prehistoric pit feature, without meaningful contents, on Cupp 5.
Given our observations of the impacts resulting from historic land use, the paucity of artifactual information retrieved, and the extreme rarity or absence of preserved archaeological context on these sites, we must conclude that the better part of a century of intensive cultivation has reduced Walters 1 and Cupp 5 to the status of ''plow zone" sites. Both Walters 1 and Cupp 5 lack the integrity necessary to make a case For their being eligible For listing in the National Register of Historic Places.