Geophysical Survey of the Hollywood Site, Tunica County, Mississippi
The Hollywood project is an on-going survey in cooperation with Dr. Jay Johnson of the University of Mississippi, John Connaway of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and Dr. Nancy Ross-Stallings and Richard Stallings of Cultural Horizons, Inc. Geophysical data collection represents a small part of a larger program of data collection using conventional and remote sensing techniques. Hollywood is a large, Late Mississippian village occupied in the sixteenth Century. Dominated by a major temple mound over 20 feet high, is consists of a village of square houses, some of them set on low platform mounds.
A typical house at Hollywood, as revealed by survey with a fluxgate gradiometer, is presented in the first illustration (figure 1, right). Measurements of nT were made with a Geoscan Research fluxgate gradiometer at 12 cm intervals along transects one-meter apart. The wall trenches of the burned structure are clearly outlined by magnetic highs, as are portions of the burned floor area. There is a suggestion of a "structure" surrounding the actual building that may indicate that the house was built on a low platform or that it was surrounded by a fence. |
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A survey of a larger portion of the Hollywood site is presented in the second illustration (figure 2, left). Here, the locations of five burned structures are outlined with rectangles. A major magnetic signal in the lower left hand of the illustration is not a house, but a metal fence post used to define the data recovery grid at the site. For this survey, to increase the speed of coverage, reading were taken at 25 cm intervals along transects one-meter apart. Despite this, there is relatively little loss in resolution. It is probably that additional structures, which were not burned, were located between these prominent burned houses. |
Finally, in the third illustration (figure 3, right), very high density readings of nT were taken at 12 cm intervals along transects 50 cm apart. Because of the number of readings taken in this small area, it was necessary to download the magnetometer often. This, coupled with the time needed to cover the close transects, makes data collection at this scale a slow, hence expensive, process. A major, complex magnetic signal suggests a series of superimposed, burned structures. In addition, aligned magnetic "highs" in the lower right hand of the illustration, suggest quite small features, possibly burned posts. Other small features are suggested elsewhere in this surveyed area. |
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In the fourth illustration (figure 4, left) magnetic and conductivity surveys of a plowed down mound at Hollywood are compared. The survey with the magnetometer is on the left (scale in nT) while the survey with a Geonics EM38 earth conductivity meter is on the right (scale in millisiemens/meter). This mound appears geophysically as a cross sectioned "onion" with rectangular signals (reflecting the shape of the mound) which measure the difference in the properties of the different stages in mound construction. The prominent magnetic signals skirting the mound area are concentrations of burned daub which at times formed a talus on the mound surface. In the conductivity survey of these same signals they register as low in conductivity (for the surveyed area) reflecting the low conductivity of burned clay. |
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