The Clough Creek and Sand Ridge Archaeological District is a

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains historic building, older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal p ...

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 recorded history, historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline ...

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 so ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

. 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 an ''affluent'', is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream (''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 into which they ...

of the

Little Miami River The Little Miami River () 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 in southwestern Ohio ...

), 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: Somerset, 1999.

Sites

Clough Creek

The Clough Creek Site occupies an area of approximately ; although no

archaeological excavation In archaeology, excavation is the exposure, processing and recording of archaeological remains. An excavation site or "dig" is the area being studied. These locations range from one to several areas at a time during a project and can be condu ...

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 ( ; colloquially nicknamed Cincy) is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking River (Kentucky), Licking and Ohio Ri ...

and Batavia, 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. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start ...

. 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 The channel catfish (''Ictalurus punctatus''), known informally as the "channel cat", is a species of catfish native to North America. They are North America's most abundant catfish species, and the official state fish of Kansas, Missouri, Nebra ...

, and freshwater drums.Emerson, Thomas E., et al.
Late Woodland Societies: Tradition and Transformation across the Midcontinent
'. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2000, 84.

Excavation and conclusions

On behalf of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, archaeologists investigated a

midden A midden is an old dump for domestic waste. It may consist of animal bones, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofacts associated with past human oc ...

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 tool Stone tools have been used throughout human history but are most closely associated with prehistoric cultures and in particular those of the Stone Age. Stone tools may be made of either ground stone or knapped stone, the latter fashioned by a ...

s, bird and deer bones, and

projectile point In 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 been kept in the ...

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 The Fort Ancient culture is a Native American archaeological culture that dates back to . Members of the culture lived along the Ohio River valley, in an area running from modern-day Ohio and western West Virginia through to northern Kentucky ...

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 (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

, 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 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 Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

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