The Clough Creek and Sand Ridge Archaeological District is a historic district composed of two

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology a ...

s in the southwestern part of the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. Its name is derived from those of the two sites included in the district: one that lies along Clough Creek (a

tributary A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drai ...

of the

Little Miami River The Little Miami River ( sjw, Cakimiyamithiipi) is a Class I tributary of the Ohio River that flows U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed May 26, 2011 through five counties ...

), and one that occupies part of the Sand Ridge near the creek.Owen, Lorrie K., ed. ''Dictionary of Ohio Historic Places''. Vol. 1.

St. Clair Shores St. Clair Shores is a suburban city bordering Lake St. Clair in Macomb County of the U.S. state of Michigan. It forms a part of the Metro Detroit area, and is located about northeast of downtown Detroit. Its population was 59,715 at the 2010 ...

: Somerset, 1999.

Sites

Clough Creek

The Clough Creek Site occupies an area of approximately ; although no archaeological excavation has been conducted there, it is believed to have been the site of a large prehistoric village.

Sand Ridge

The Sand Ridge Site lies about away from the Clough Creek Site. Located along a prominent ridgeline to the west of the old Union Bridge along the road between

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

and

Batavia Batavia may refer to: Historical places * Batavia (region), a land inhabited by the Batavian people during the Roman Empire, today part of the Netherlands * Batavia, Dutch East Indies, present-day Jakarta, the former capital of the Dutch East In ...

, it has long been known as a significant archaeological site. As early as the 1880s, many individuals frequently visited the ridge to collect artifacts from the surface, such as bones, pottery, and pieces of

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and sta ...

. The residents appear to have inhabited the site only seasonally, with autumn and winter being the most likely times of occupation. They appear to have been heavily dependent on fish for their food, as many fish bones have been discovered at Sand Ridge; among the most common types of fish were suckers, channel catfish, and

freshwater drum The freshwater drum, ''Aplodinotus grunniens'', is a fish endemic to North and Central America. It is the only species in the genus ''Aplodinotus'', and is a member of the family Sciaenidae. It is the only North American member of the group that ...

s.Emerson, Thomas E., et al.
Late Woodland Societies: Tradition and Transformation across the Midcontinent
'.

Lincoln Lincoln most commonly refers to: * Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the sixteenth president of the United States * Lincoln, England, cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England * Lincoln, Nebraska, the capital of Nebraska, U.S. * Lincol ...

: U of Nebraska P, 2000, 84.

Excavation and conclusions

On behalf of the

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums focusing on anthropological material, with ...

, archaeologists investigated a midden at Sand Ridge in 1884. They were able to add a wide range of artifacts to the museum's collection, including a wide range of stone tools, bird and deer bones, and

projectile point In North American archaeological terminology, a projectile point is an object that was hafted to a weapon that was capable of being thrown or projected, such as a javelin, dart, or arrow. They are thus different from weapons presumed to have ...

s. In more recent years, Clough Creek has also attracted attention for the artifacts visible on its surface, including scrapers, blanks, and projectile points. According to archaeological estimates, some artifacts at the site may be buried as much as below the surface. Despite the distance between the two sites, they are believed to be closely related. Artifacts found at Sand Ridge indicate that they are part of the Madisonville Focus of the

Fort Ancient Fort Ancient is a name for a Native American culture that flourished from Ca. 1000-1750 CE and predominantly inhabited land near the Ohio River valley in the areas of modern-day southern Ohio, northern Kentucky, southeastern Indiana and western ...

culture.Brady-Rawlins, Kathleen.
The O.C. Voss Site: Reassessing What We Know about the Fort Ancient Occupation of the Central Scioto Drainage and Its Tributaries
''. Diss.

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

, 2007. Accessed 2010-06-17. This identification is based primarily on the pottery recovered, which resembles that of the Madisonville and State Line Sites. A distinctive feature of Sand Ridge is the presence of artifacts from two chronologically different cultures: the Fort Ancient village was apparently built on the site of an earlier

Late Woodland In the classification of archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 BCE to European contact in the eastern part of North America, with some archaeolog ...

occupation.

Recognition

In 1974, the Clough Creek and Sand Ridge Archaeological District was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

because of its information-yielding potential. In the community of Newtown to the east are several villages that have received a similar status: the Perin, Turpin, and Hahn Field sites. Like Clough Creek and Sand Ridge, Turpin and Hahn Field were once Fort Ancient villages that were founded atop former Woodland period villages, while Perin Village and the related Odd Fellows' Cemetery Mound are exclusively Woodland sites.

References

{{Archaeological NRHP in Hamilton County, Ohio Fort Ancient culture Pre-Columbian cultural areas Archaeological sites in Ohio Pre-Columbian archaeological sites Archaeological sites in Hamilton County, Ohio National Register of Historic Places in Hamilton County, Ohio Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio