North American Database of Archaeological Geophysics
North American Database of Archaeological Geophysics
Abstract/Summary:
Project Name: Sluss Cabin , KS;
Reference: Kvamme, K.L. (2000). Current Practices in Archaeogeophysics: Magnetics, Resistivity, Conductivity, and Ground-Penetrating Radar. In Earth Sciences and Archaeology, P. Goldberg, V. Holliday, and R. Ferring, eds., Plenum Press, New York, pp. 353-384.
This site on the 3D Ranch represents a pioneer settlement near El Dorado, Kansas, that was reportedly a dairy farm. Surface artifacts, including broken glass, pottery, nails, a stone-lined well, and some foundation blocks near the survey area, support an 1860s and later occupation. The site is located below a slope in a sheltered drainage, now ponded and heavily vegetated in brush and trees. The area surveyed was placed in the largest level spot adjacent to the ponded area that could have supported a large structure. Soils were extremely moist and the dense vegetation impeded the survey. Owing to suspected colluvial deposits prospecting depth was set at 1 m. The raw data possessed a marked regional trend in electrical resistance owing to the proximity of the pond and ground moisture changes with increasing distance from the pond. In order to remove this trend and ascertain if other patterns might exist within this data set, a least-squares plane was fit to the data, and then subtracted from the raw measurements. This removed the trend and the residuals expressed clear pattern, suggestive of a building foundation, most probably a dairy barn.
The Sluss Cabin site represents a pioneering homestead on the Kansas frontier of the late 1870s. The site is located on a small fenced-in parcel measuring about 25 m wide, located in a contemporary farmyard. Overgrown in dense vegetation, the tops of two stone foundation blocks are visible at the surface. The surrounding farmyard contains an abundance of abandoned iron and steel farm machinery, water tanks, a barbed wire fence with an iron gate surrounds the parcel, and strands of wire, nails, and other recent debris litter the ground. These circumstances posed a challenge to geophysical survey. The profusion of iron-bearing and other metallic artifacts precluded magnetic and EM surveys. The surface expression of parts of the foundation indicated a depth too shallow for conventional GPR unless an unusually high frequency antenna was employed. Consequently, electrical resistance methods were selected. The stone blocks show up as highly resistant in the imagery revealing a rectangular foundation split into two rooms. One room (south) has a resistant stone cobble floor; the other (north) a less resistant earthen floor (verified with coring). Outside of the cabin two additional features occur. Subtly revealed linear alignments about a meter wide extend outward from the north and west cabin walls.They are expressed by slightly elevated measurements that may represent walkways where more compacted earth has increased soil resistivity. If they are walkways then the loci of entrances to the cabin may be inferred. Oral history tells us that the family in this house contracted smallpox. As a result, the cabin was burned down in 1879.