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To contact us: Dr Linda Barrett (Geography) ~ barrett@uakron.edu Dr Timothy Matney (CSAA) ~ matney@uakron.edu Dr Lisa Park (Geology) ~ lepark@uakron.edu
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The project area resides in the Cuyahoga River Valley just north of Akron, Ohio. This area has a complicated Pleistocene history, being the area of convergence of two and sometimes three lobes of ice. The valley and its hills are covered by a series of tills interbedded with lacustrine clays that were produced in ice dammed lakes as the Laurentide ice sheet waxed and waned in the region and buried the pre-Pleistocene topography. The Cuyahoga River has deeply dissected these deposits into high narrow hills (1100-1200ft) and steep river valleys (600-800ft) during and since the Holocene. The lower tills are more sandy and relatively resistant to erosion while the upper tills are clayey and silty and more easily eroded. Specifically, our study area is located on the flood plain of the Cuyahoga River that is dominated by the sand, gravel, and clay deposits of the buried valley in which it resides (White, 1984). The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has classified the soil of the project area as a ‘CpB/Chili silt loam on 2-6% slopes’ and describes it as ‘well drained and erodable’. Recent overbank deposition of a silty composition comprises this dynamic and active flood plain. Since it has been subject to repeated episodes of both erosion and deposition, the landforms contemporaneous with prehistoric culture may have been deeply buried or scoured completely. |
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The Ice Age |
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The Geology of the Site |
