Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Long term Flooding Consequences

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

Reseachers will undertake interdisciplinary research to study the resiliency of a traditional society in the Ohio River Valley. Floods are the most common natural hazard faced by human populations, having long played an important role in shaping our natural and social environments. As the risk of large-scale flood events increases in many parts of the world, it is crucial to build as much information about how both flood regimes change over time, as well as how communities may respond to these events.

Archaeology provides a unique deep timeframe of analysis to study these issues. Currently, policymakers attempting to plan for flood prevention and responses are often limited to historical data that are only a few hundred years old at best. In contrast, this project will provide long term information regarding changes in flooding at the confluence of the Ohio and Great Miami Rivers.

As a result, urban planners, engineers, city administrators, and first responders will be able to plan for flood events more accurately in nearby modern river communities. Furthermore, local students and volunteers will be involved in this project, allowing for a unique experience performing interdisciplinary research where they live.

The investigators will examine how the inhabitants of the Guard site located at the confluence of the Ohio and Great Miami Rivers, were resilient to inundation at various scales. Floods are often viewed as risks in modern American society; however, floods are also key in depositing nutrient rich sediments along the floodplain as well as replenishing back swamps and oxbow lakes, creating a resource rich environmental mosaic.

Traditional societies took full advantage of these floodplain environments across North America for millenia, creating a unique relationship with the natural elements of their environment. What did resiliency to occasional floods both large and small look like for agriculturalists living along one of the largest rivers in North America? This research uses a combination of soil science and archaeological methods to examine these processes.

Combining archaeological excavation data with information from geological soil cores, flood deposits and possible rebuilding episodes will be cross-examined. This interdisciplinary dataset will help better determine the role of natural hazards on the social lives of these communities. In short, this research will clarify long term socio-ecological relationships of agricultural communities in the Eastern United States facilitating the refinement of current theoretical models regarding the role of fluvial environments in community life history.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.