Physical Environment

Geology

          Chronology and processes (evolution)

          Hydrology (effects of water)

          Pedology (soils)

Mississippi Alluvial Valley Geology

Chronology and processes (evolution)

Zilpha Formation Kaolin Clay mined at Sledge

Early Research on Pleistocene Loess

New Madrid Seismic Zone

Basic Stratigraphic Sequence of the Ouachita Mountains

About the White Clay—Mined at Sledge

Panola County Geology, FE Vestal, 1956, Mississippi State Geological Survey Bulletin 81.

The white ball clay is from the Zilpha formation. The picture is the Sledge K-T clayshed along the railroad, with the partial new roof after the tornado a couple of years ago. For general users, this report describes many outcrops and gives their specific locations, however, many have been covered with soil and/or kudzu in the half century since the survey took place.

Clay pit, bluff hills, Panola Co., MS. 2007.

Stratigraphy outcropping in Panola County, Mississippi: Quaternary (Holocene) recent alluvium (Pleistocene) loess --unconformity— Tertiary (Pliocene) Citronelle gravel and sand --unconformity— (Eocene) Claiborne sub-series, Kosciusko formation clay, sand, lignite and sand/siltstone --unconformity— Zilpha formation clay, sand, lignite and sand/siltstone Winona formation sand and sandstone Tallahatta formation shale, clay, sand, silt and sand/siltstone

The oldest, the Eocene Tallahatta formation, is best known for the buhrstone or orthoquartzite outcropping in Lauderdale and Clarke Co. Mississippi and adjacent Choctaw and Clarke Co. Alabama. This formation outcrops in the bottom of ravines along the eastern edge of Panola County, particularly in the Sardis and Enid Reservoirs. Near Pleasant Green church, just across the Lafayette Co. line, unconformable contacts with the overlying Kosciusko formation are exposed. Here in north Mississippi, the Tallahatta fm is a sometimes micaceous or silty white shale that cleaves in paper-thin leaves, but in south Mississippi it is a low-grade material that was used for chipped stone tools, especially in the Archaic period. The formation is generally capped by tabular, silty and sandy ferruginous/limonitic material. In Panola County, outcrops can (or could) be found in Yokona valley, Rowsey Creek (now Enid lake), Bynum Creek, near Sandy Springs church (also in Lafayette), Dee’s Store (still standing on Hwy 315), Deer Creek (north of Mt. Olive church), branches of Hotopa Creek around the old Central Academy community, around Black Jack village and school, west of Bluff Springs church, south of Cold Springs, and at Thompson Creek landing at the Sardis dam. The locations around the Sardis dam (Patton Creek, Moccasin Point, Wilborn Creek, Nelson Creek, Simon chapel) are the best exposures, and are still easy to access. The Tallahatta material was believed to derive from Wilcox and Midway formation beds: “surely the parts of the Porters Creek, Naheola, Betheden, Fearn Springs, and Akerman terranes which have been removed by erosion contained sufficient clay and silt and fine sand to account for the lithologic character of the Tallahatta (p.53).” The Tallahatta in Panola is very similar to that used by the Holly Springs brick and pottery industries in Marshall County, but there is no record of commercial use of the material in Panola County.

The Winona formation is not positively identified in the country, but in many of the Tallahatta exposures the sand and siltstones atop it (called Neshoba member) resemble previously published descriptions of the Winona fm., but the glauconitic (greensand) character is lacking. However, red and yellow sands that may be part of the Winona were noted around Pleasant Green and Liberty Hill churches, Township 10 S, Ranges 5 and 6 W. At the Old Hickory Clay Company pit some marcasite concretions/gastropod pseudomorphs and cylindrical iron ore pieces encrusted with reddish oolites were found. The iron ore was also found at the K-T clay pit; these materials are typical of the Winona fm.

The Zilpha formation is one of the most important strata of the county, economically. The type locality is in Attala Co., where it lies conformably on the Winona. The surface exposures are along the bluff or edge of the Mississippi alluvial valley. Rock of the Zilpha is exposed at the Sardis dam, where carbonaceous or lignitic lenses can be seen. Most of the Zilpha is sand and rust-stained shale, but the white clay, up to 25’ thick, is the main material of interest. The outcrop at Tocawa creek, church and community (S8, T10S,R8W and S10, T27N, R2E) shows marcasite concretions and lignitic fossil wood; in some places the formation is noted to have an iron sulphide stink. Proceeding north, there is another outcrop a mile south of Asa, at the foot of the bluff. Both these locales have a distinct, sharp boundary with the overlying sand and gravel. The main outcrop lies between Delta and Buxton (Township 6 and 7 South, Range 9 West). Large exposures were examined at the Old Hickory Clay Co pit (SE 1/4, Sect 21, T7S R9W) and the Kentucky-Tennessee Clay Co. pit (Section 21 T7S R9W). Here the formation is described as 3’ of sandy yellow, white and grey thin bedded silt; 11’ of sandy and clayey dark to light grey silt, and 20’ of grey to white plastic commercial grade clay. Crenshaw was a shipping point for clay on the Illinois Central (YMV) railroad; the Kentucky-Tennessee Clay Co. plant was (and is) 3 miles south of Crenshaw. This is about a mile north of Sledge. [The address of the K-T processing and shipping plant is now Sledge.]

Since around 1900, clay has been mined at various locations along the bluff. The earliest reported use was at Enid, Tallahatchie County, where early Mississippi geologist Lowe reported ‘considerable quantities of the clay shipped to northern buyers…it approximates the German clay (p.125).’ Priddy also noted of the Tallahatchie County clay pits “from 1910 to 1920, and especially during the war years, at least two thousand carloads of Enid clay were dug from the base of the bluff north of Charleston, hauled east by wagon to Enid, and shipped north on the Illinois Central Railroad.” McCutcheon, ceramic engineer for the geologic survey noted ‘the bond clays…were extensively mined during World War I for use as a refractory bond in the manufacture of glass pots and metallurgical crucibles. In later years and at the present time the clay is being marketed as an enamel clay that serves as a suspending medium for the wet enamel batch.’ The outcrop at Tocowa is too silty for commercial use. The main Panola County pits are north of Delta. “The Old Hickory Clay Company dug a large pit and built a drying shed 1.5 miles north of Delta, but soon discontinued operation [a house sits on the site of the shed now, immediately north of #315]….the Kentucky-Tennessee Clay Company of Mayfield, Kentucky, and Paris, Tennessee,…[has a large pit] some 500 yards long and 200 yards wide at a place where the top of the bluff is 120 feet above the floodplain (p. 126).” [This pit is now closed and diggings have moved slightly to the east]. The clay was dug and loaded by dragline or power shovel [today, trackhoes and endloaders] and hauled to the drying shed, pulverized and sacked for shipment. F.H. Womack of Crenshaw had a pit and drying shed at S32, T6S, R9W along Kirksey Creek northeast of Crenshaw. The bed mined was 8-14’ thick and most was sold to the Hommel Co., Pittsburg, for enamel; it was sold in 1954 to K-T.

Kosciusco formation has around 100’of a reddish brown or yellowish brown sand that forms the main surface area of the county, where it is not covered with Pliocene age Citronelle gravel or Pleistocene/Holocene loess. In many places the lowest part is lithified, especially where the underlying material is relatively impervious shale. Most of the exposure is limited to dissected patches. The main unbroken area is in the eastern part of the county along the Lafayette County line, as around Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist, Mount Olive Methodist and Pilgrims’ Rest Baptist churches along Hwy 315, where it forms the upper part of hills such as Terrapin Mountain (Sect 16, T9S, R5W) and Lowe Mountain (S9), the highest points in the county, which are capped with large blocks of dark ferruginous sandstone (“mountain” is a relative term.). North of Hwy 6, the Kosciusco terrane is often the surface material, as at Black Jack, Cold Springs and above Jones and Thompson Creeks. A wide range of contorted, fluted, tubular and pipe sandstone can be found near the spillway. In some places, the Kosciusco appears to contain reworked Zilpha white shale materials.

The Citronelle formation is also of great economic significance, as it has provided this large county with an abundance of good clay-sand and gravel roads. It also provided the whole region’s prehistoric inhabitants their main edged tool making material. The gravel blanket between the younger loess and older Kosciusco and Claiborne formations is of variable thickness. The gravel is mostly tan chert, but there is also abundant sandstone, quartzite, and crystalline quartz. It ranges from pea gravel to cobbles. Crossbedding of the sand matrix is commonly observed. Important outcrop exposures were noted east of Eureka Springs near Long Creek (S4, T10S, R6W), southwest of Central Academy in the upper Hotopha Creek valley (S15, T9S, R6W), the large Linn Sand and Gravel Co. pits (S5, T9S, R6W) where the material is 25-30’ thick, in Jones Creek valley south of Hwy 35, the wall of Clarendon Creek valley (S28, T7S, R6W), west of Union Church and School (S16, T7S, R6W). There are also many exposures along the walls of the Tallahatchie and Mississippi valleys, as at McGhee, Askew, and Buxton. There was a large pit mining this sand/gravel at Crystal Springs Sand and Gravel Co. (2 miles north of Crenshaw in S33, T6S, R9W; this pit has been closed for many years; before mining it was a summer resort and there are still flowing springs). There are further Citronelle outcrops on Crooked Creek; in the pits along the McIvor Drainage Canal (S21, T7S, R7W); East Floyd and Oil creeks; at Tallahatchie Station (center S22, T8S, R7W); in the Bear Creek valley walls; in old pits along Nelson, Long, Hayne and Peters creeks; along the Courtland road and near Independence Presbyterian church. “A study of the Panola County Citronelle…makes clear that the formation is a flat lying blanket…of variable thickness. The variation of thickness in short distances is due to 1) deposition on an eroded surface; 2) irregular deposition from shifting currents of variable velocity; 3) erosion subsequent to deposition. The gravel deposits seem to have been left by a number of streams rather than by one large stream alone (p. 90-91).” A well at the Como Prisoner of War Camp [that’s another story…] showed 30’ of loess and 120’ of sand and gravel; indicative of several terrace levels deposited in a broad valley.

Finally, the loess, or ‘grey to tan velvety silt,’ which is the basis for most of Panola County’s soil--the loess is very much the same throughout the state, and is characterized by “1) uniformity of texture; 2) extreme fineness and angularity of shape of particles; 3) generally massive structure; 4) lack of coherence; 5) capacity to stand as vertical-faced walls; 6) capacity to absorb water (p.93).” [I described a slightly later loess study in yesterday’s entry.] Some of the main exposures noted in the ‘50s were: road cuts in Township 10 South, Range 6 West ; northeast of Eureka Springs; headwaters of Peters Creek; the road southwest from Pope to the Yokona River and the bluff; road cuts around the tributaries of O’Brien Creek (S4T10SR8W); east of Tocowa church and towards the bluff; ravines north of the Tallahatchie River; along 310 between Como and Crenshaw. The main points to ascend the bluff are at Askew/Buxton, Crenshaw, Sledge/Delta, and perhaps most notably at Ballentine [Hays Brothers and Hall].

The Vestal report also speculates on structure (warping, subsidence and uplift); I will not describe that here because I don’t know how well it matches modern interpretation. I will summarize the proposed historical geology. “In Late Tallahatta time the territory was covered by the marginal zone of the Gulf Embayment. From the bordering lands on the east many small streams were transporting silt and clay and fine sand….The consistent fineness of the sediment…is strongly suggestive that the streams were of low gradient…the land was low lying and of slight relief. Plants…and marine animals have left sparse fossils….Lignitic shale points to temporary and local non-marine conditions…In time the stream system…began to carry more sand…either because of slight uplift or because the streams had lengthened until at least some of them had reached into a sand terrane, or because some of the main streams…had sunk…into sand. The accumulation of the Winona sand has been interpreted as indicating subsidence…probably…so gradual that generally uniform conditions were maintained…The source region of the sediment seems to have again been brought low, or the drainage system had again reached a dominantly clay and silt terrane, as testified by…the Zilpha formation, the greater part of which was deposited on the low land adjacent to the sea and its swamps and shallow lake basins. The new land was subject to weathering and erosion for a long period, and then became the site of deposition for immense quantities of fine sand mingling with silt and clay….Following the deposition of the Kosciusko sand the Panola County area did not become a site of large scale deposition again until Pliocene time. During the remainder of Eocene time and the whole of the Oligocene and Miocene the land was undergoing intensive weathering and erosion. At the close of Kosciusko time the surface was at a much higher elevation relative to today’s mean sea-level than it is at present, and as the Gulf receded southward the region that is now North Mississippi remained a low plateau. The old plateau was thoroughly dissected and greatly reduced in height…Events of Pliocene and Pleistocene times have left the Citronelle gravels, sands, and clays, and the Loess silt…Pleistocene time, the great ice age, brought a radical change of climate….In…Northern Mississippi, erosion was intensified, very probably, because of restriction of plant life by low temperatures, and because of increased volumes of water from melting ice, especially during the summer. At this time the wind was an important aggradational agent, spreading the loessial silt from the river floodplain over the adjoining territory (pp. 104-106).”

Early Research on Pleistocene Loess

Snowden, JO and RR Priddy, Geology of Mississippi Loess. CD Caplenor et al., Forests of West Central Mississippi as Affected by Loess. Both in Loess Investigations in Mississippi, 1968, Mississippi Geological, Economic and Topographical Survey Bulletin 111.

Snowden and Priddy sampled 3 locations: 1) at Greenwood, south of Teoc and south of Fanegusha Creek back of Tchula, and at Big Sandy Creek [north of the early colonial villages at Abiacha and Chicopa Creeks at Coila]; 2) southernmost Wilkinson County and Concordia Parish [at the old Tunica town on the Louisiana penal farm]; and 3) a transect between Vicksburg and the Jackson Prairie crossing the Big Black River basin in Warren and Hinds counties. They also examined the then new I-20 and Hwy 61 road cuts and some gravel pits. The report includes a literature review from the earliest days thru the 1940s, attempts a correlation with the Midwest "Peoria" loesses. The findings include a correlation with the pre-loess landscape, so that the Citronelle-capped dissected upland's relief is accentuated by the overlying blanket of loess. Loess deposited in the pre-existing valleys was removed as fast as it was deposited. They describe the piedmont of reworked loess at the base of the Mississippi Valley side walls. The loess thins logarithmically, so that it is thickest at the bluff, thins rapidly in the first few miles, then the rate of thinning slows so that a thin loess extends into central Mississippi. This is as reported for the Peoria as well. East of Vicksburg the loess, in places, lies on Miocene Catahoula formation bedrock rather than the usual Citronelle gravel. To the east, the thin leached edge of the loess lies on a silty facies of the Eocene Kosciusko formation; while both are silty, they are mineralogical distinct. The loess was found to be dolomitic rather than calcitic as had previously been thought. The profile is typically leached to 10-15' below surface, calcite-enriched with a peak at 15-20', and dolomitic below 25'. Even in the calcite enriched zone, dolomite is the predominant carbonate except in the concretions. The lowest, dolomitic zone is assumed to be unweathered. Radiocarbon dates were taken on fossil Allogona profunda (snail) shells; the same species is found in the loess zone today as was there 20,000 years ago. There was no detectable inversion of arogonite to calcite in these snail shells. The Lower Mississippi Valley loess was found to be derived from the same source as the upper Mississippi Valley loess: glacial till detridal calcite and dolomite. The Roxana silts of the Missouri River valley limestones, and limestones from the Lake Michigan glacial lobe outwash. The concretions are quite interesting; they are called by the German terms "losskinchen", "lossmanchen", "losspuppen": Loess-babies, loess-men, loess-puppies. Some do archive a rudely anthropoid form, and are sometimes called "loess dolls". They derive from root casts replaced with calcite leached from higher in the profile. The various formations are distinguished by their minerals. The Plio-Pliestocene Citronelle gravel is derived from the Appalachian plateau, and is marked by about half zircon, followed by kyanite, staurolite, tourmaline and rutile. The Tertiary sediments (Miocene and/or Eocene) are distinguished by more than half horneblende, a quarter zircon, and some epidote and garnet. The loess heavy mineral fraction is more than half hornblende, with a quarter epidote, some zircon and garnet. The Citronelle has less than 2% mica; the terrace silts up to 55% mica, and the loess 60% mica. Hematite/limonite was common in all the materials studied. Ilmenite was the dominant black/opaque mineral in all three as well. Magnetite was rare in the Citronelle and more abundant in the loess and terraces. These are interpreted as strikingly different mineralogical sources: the loess derives from the igneous metamorphic rocks of the Canadian Shield and interior basins. The Citronella sand and gravel is a typical Gulf Coastal Plain assemblage as in the Cretaceous and Tertiary deposits ultimately derived from igneous/metamorphic rocks of the South Appalachians.

New Madrid Seismic Zone Earthquakes

R.H. Lafferty III, M.C. Sierzchula, G. Powell, N. Lopinot, C.Spears, B. Carter and L.G. Santeford, 2002, Data Recovery at the Hillhouse Site (23MI699). Report submitted to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Memphis District, by Mid-Continental Research Associated, Inc.

The Birds' Point/New Madrid Floodway is the northernmost part of the delta, in the Missouri Bootheel. This section of floodplain is surrounded by a set-back levee, which was built to protect the town of Cairo. It is intended that the main-line levee would be blown at Birds' Point, allowing excess Mississippi-Ohio water to cover the floodway, thus reducing pressure on the city levee. This will of course ruin the farms inside the floodway, and my uncle's farm is in the northernmost part that would be hardest hit. So while a lot of great archaeology came out of the EIS end of the Corps of Engineers' feasibility studies, I hope the floodway is never used.

I will add a little from Lafferty et al. 2002:26-27:

Catastrophic great (8+) events have been documented by Tuttle et al. (1996, 1999, Tuttle 1999). Lafferty vividly summarizes the effects as collated by Fuller (1912). The country around New Madrid had been, in 1800, a land of small prairies or meadows scattered in the thick woods. After 1812, it was a country of ponds (slashes) and sand hills. Some of the bottoms of ponds, lakes and streams had been thrust up, pouring their water over the surrounding land, while much timber land sank up to 6'/1.8 m. The townsite itself sank 15'/4.6 m, and each spring flood carried more of it away. Some river island sank so that only their treetops showed above water, and many trees were thrown into the water from caving banks; these "planters" and "sawyers" (timber with little showing above water and free-floating trees) created a significant navigation hazard for some years to come. Little River was changed from a tributary of the Mississippi to a set of tributaries of the St. Francis (the Left Hand and Right Hand Chutes of Little River).

In the NMSZ, the main liquefaction features are linear dikes paralleling river courses and discrete sand pipes. The first have a linear expression and result from natural levee slumping while the second has a point source and results from the ejection of a cone of sand 10-40 m diameter. Those on the Hillhouse site are over 1000 years old, but still affect crop productivity.

The first of the prehistoric earthquakes was discovered in the excavations of Towosaghy Mound A and dates AD 400 after Saucier 1990. [At this state park, spectacular white sand-filled fissures cut thru graves and structures.] Two other large events documented in the Eaker Air Force Base project have been dated AD 900 + 100 and AD 1500 (Tuttle also Guccione et al. 1998, 2000). A fourth documented at the Burkett site dates 500 BC (Thomas et al. 2000). Also, there is evidence in the Peoria loess on the Commerce Hills, in the form of fault breaking and slipping, indicating Pleistocene activity (Hoffman et al. 1996).

"These events also seem to correlate to otherwise defined chronological breaks in the archaeological record."

Guccione, Margaret J., Roy Van Arsdale and Lynne H. Hehr, 2000, Origin and age of the Manila high and associated Big Lake sunklands in the New Madrid seismic zone, northeast Arkansas. Geological Society of America Bulletin 112 (4):579-590.

Hoffman, D., J. Palmer, J. Vaughn, and R. Harrison, 1996, Late Quaternary surface faulting at English Hill in southeast Missouri. Seismological Research Letters 67(2)/91st annual meeting Seismological Society of America program and abstracts.

Saucier, Roger T., 1990, Relationship of the Beckwith's Fort (23MI2, Towosaghy State Historic Site) to the physical environment. In Archaeological Investigations in Three Areas of Towosaghy State Historic Site, 23Mi2, Mississippi County, Missouri, 1989, by JE Price, GL Fox, and RT Saucier. Report submitted to Division of Parks by University of Missouri, Columbia.

Thomas, Prentice and Robert H. Lafferty, 2000, Chronology and Culture in the Cairo Lowland: Woodland and Mississippian. Symposium at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Macon, Georgia.

Tuttle, M.P., 1999, Late Holocene Earthquakes and their Implications for Earthquake Potential of the New Madrid Seismic Zone, Central United States. Unpublished dissertation, University of Maryland.

Tuttle, M.P., R.H. Lafferty, M.J. Guccione, E.S. Schweig, N. Lopinot, R.F. Cande, M.L. Haynes, 1996, Use of archaeology to date liquefaction features and seismic events in the New Madrid seismic zone, central United States. Geoarchaeology 11(6):451-480.

Tuttle, M.P., R.H. Lafferty and E.S. Schweig, 1998, Dating of liquefaction features in the New Madrid seismic zone and implications for earthquake hazard. Report submitted to US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

I will begin by pointing out that the lower and central Mississippi valley flows through a lowland filling the Mississippi embayment: at numerous times far in the past this has been a shallow sea and is filled with layers of sediment thousands of feet deep, the sinking weight of which has causing downwarping and faulting of the hard Paleozoic basement rock. The New Madrid Fault Zone, following the axis of this syncline, is considered to be a failed rift valley, like that of the Great Lakes of Africa, or of the upper basin of the Rio Grande in Colorado and New Mexico. Why it is considered a "failed" rift I don't know, because the seismicity is still active, and we are constantly warned to expect a major earthquake in the Memphis region.

I have had to good luck to work on some of the geoarchaeology that has been done in the New Madrid area, including June Mirecki's pollen coring in the Obion River basin and some of Tish Tuttle's later work on sandblows or, more prosaically, "liquefaction features." There aren't many things in archaeology worth dying for, but I would consider risking my life to get to see a sandblow formed. Sandblows are created during strong shaking when saturated sands erupt thru overlying heavier soils. I don't think that they would be as pronounced in a modern event because we have done so much to remove the water that was a primary feature of the Delta prior to the main levee building and ditch digging, 1880-1930. The first, perched water table at about 15-20' is gone in many places, so the sand substrate would not liquefy to the extent it did in the 1811 and prior events. Radiocarbon dating of archaeological materials on and under sandblows has allowed the development of a chronology of activity in the New Madrid Seismic Zone extending several thousand years into the past, indicating magnitude 6 or 7 events every 200-400 years (i.e. the next big one could be any day between now and AD 2200). In addition, almost any archaeological project in northeast Arkansas or the Missouri bootheel encounters evidence of these historic and prehistoric earthquakes. These range from very small fissures filled with sand to blocks of lignite brought up with eruptive sandblows. There are large sections like Reelfoot Lake in northwest Tennessee and the St. Francis Sunk Lands, Sand Slough, Tyronza Lake, Big Lake, and Dead Timber Lake in Craighead, Mississippi and Poinsett counties Arkansas that were made into swamps by the 1811-12 earthquakes.

Fuller, Myron L. 1912 The New Madrid Earthquake. United States Geological Survey Bulletin 494, Government Printing Office, Washington. [1989 facsimile reprint, Center for Earthquake Studies, Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau.]

Fuller's 1912 study was the first attempt to pull together all available observations of the 1811-1812 earthquakes centered at Mew Madrid Missouri, but felt in most then-settled parts of the United States, from New Orleans to Canada and the east coast. This series of earthquakes began with a great shock in December 1811, followed by similar events in January and February, and continuing for 2 years afterwards. While few were killed on land, due to the sparse settlement and the fact that the architecture of the region was mainly flexible log cabins or light frame shanties, there were reports of loss of life on the river, with overturned canoes and crushed flatboats reported by those on the river at the time (42-43). These accounts include those of the naturalist John Bradbury, who was engaged in hauling lead from Missouri, and Roosevelt, who was taking the first steamer New Orleans down. The eponymous village New Madrid slid into the Mississippi; other settlements like Little Prairie (Caruthersville) had buildings and fields so damaged that they were abandoned. Federal efforts at relief in the form of permitting exchanged of claims resulted largely in fraud on the part of St. Louis speculators (44).

In1849 Charles Lyell had recorded Indian traditions of previous earthquakes producing sunk lands and overthrown timber, and historical records mention upper Mississippi valley earthquakes in 1776, 1791 or 1792, 1795, 1796 and 1804. There was likewise geological evidence of previous strong shaking, including reports of lithified sandstone dikes in the Eocene Porter's Creek formation of Tennessee/Kentucky. Such geological evidence of seismic activity is widespread from the mouth of the Arkansas on the southwest to mouth of the Wabash on the lower Ohio on the northeast; modern studies consider these two extremes independent centers of seismic activity. These signs of disturbance include sandblows, doming, sunk lands, sand-filled sloughs, landslides along the loess bluff east of Reelfoot, bank caving on the Mississippi, faults showing scarps with 200 year old trees, and areas of timber killed by subsidence or being overthrown. The main area spotted with sand blows covers 50,000 square miles.

At the time of Fuller's survey, much of the Arkansas Delta still had not been logged, ditched or leveed, and the traces of the 1811-1812 earthquakes were still plain. The visit was made on horseback and in dugout canoe, by rail and wagon. The report very carefully describes geological, soil and plant characteristics of the region; these observations make up the main body of the report and are highly valuable because the subsequent century of industrial-scale timbering and agriculture has largely removed or blurred many of these traces. These were fissures (47-58), faults and landslides (59-61), warping or doming and subsidence (62-75), extrusion or ejection (76-87), and split, overthrown or drowned trees (95-99). The region is still, however, marked by fields of now leveled sandblows, closely spaced, sometimes over 50 m in diameter, resulting in very uneven growing conditions (in Sharkey-Steel association soils, the well-drained sand is droughty in contrast with the cooler and wetter gumbo clay or silty clay). Lignite ejected with the sand is commonly found, and the entire landscape of districts such as the St. Francis Sunk Lands and the Reelfoot Lake basin were controlled by these earthquakes.

The mechanism of earthquakes was unknown in 1912, so Fuller gathered many types of data that might be relevant, including meteorological, diurnal, lunar, barometric. Fuller concludes that only the last of these might have any effect as it seems that there were more quakes on cloudy/rainy days (39). Data on the condition of springs, sulphurous gas emissions, dark clouds, flashes of light, aurora-like glowing skies, loud sounds, nature and direction of motion, was collected by residents of Louisville, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio throughout the years of activity (44-47). He also notes that 1812 was the year 10,000 were killed in the Caracas earthquakes; there was also one in California at about the same time. Also, St. Vincent Soufriere in the West Indies and Sabrina in the Azores were undergoing eruptions, but Fuller does not propose any connection between these events.

I'll close with Fuller's (1912:110) predictions:

"Any severe earthquake originating at or near the center of the 1811 disturbance would be disastrous to such towns as Hickman in Kentucky; Caruthersville, New Madrid, Campbell, and others in Missouri, and Jonesboro, Marked Tree, Osceola, and others in Arkansas….The damage would be far greater that from the earlier shocks, owing to the prevalence of brick buildings, and the loss of life would be considerable. The larger cities of Cairo and Memphis would also suffer severely. Memphis…is situated on a loess plain terminating in a bluff about 50 feet high facing the Mississippi River and underlain at water level by a bed of sand saturated with water. These conditions…gave rise to the especially heavy destruction at New Madrid….Cairo…on a point between the Ohio and Mississippi, is likewise in an especially dangerous position….Such points of land were the very first to give way in the New Madrid shock and to be swallowed by the river….St. Louis would also probably be severely shaken, but it is built on firmer ground…."

CERI, the Center for Earthquake Research and Investigations, at the University of Memphis takes the regional lead in earthquake studies. Very extensive archaeological documentation has also been undertaken by Robert H. Lafferty III and his colleagues at Mid-Continental Research Associates, Inc., Lowell, Arkansas. Bob Lafferty's work included the Base Realignment inventory for Eaker Air Force Base in Mississippi County, Arkansas, and the New Madrid Floodway in New Madrid and Mississippi counties, Missouri.

Hydrology (effects of water)

Most of the best farmland of the bottoms cutting into the hills of Mississippi is now covered with flood-control and recreational lakes. The lakebeds are covered with the ruins of farms and towns dating to and before the early 20th century. The Coldwater, Tallahatchie, Yocona and  Skuna rivers all have U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dams, which greatly lessen spring flooding in the Delta. photos by Kent Smith/Tech-it-Out

Winter flooding near Sledge, 2001.

--February 2005

Bibliography

Collins, Wilkie J.

1985 Observations on thermal treatment of Citronelle gravels from Louisiana and Mississippi: an archaeological assessment. Mississippi Archaeology 19(2):7-12.

Connaway, John M.and Sam McGahey

1996 Archaeological reconnaissance: survey of remnant braided stream surfaces in the western central Yazoo Basin. Mississippi Archaeology 1996(2):23-50.

Ferring, C.R.

1986 Rates of fluvial sedimentation:  implications for archaeological variability.  Geoarchaeology  1(3):259-274. John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Goodyear, Albert C.

1977 The Brand site:  a techno-functional study of a Dalton site in northeast Arkansas. Arkansas Archaeological Survey Research Series 7.

1982 The chronological position of the Dalton horizon in the southeastern United States.  American Antiquity 47(2):382-395.

Gunn, Joel D.

1997    A framework for the middle-late Holocene transition:  astronomical and geophysical conditions.  Southeastern Archaeology 16(2): 134-151.

Johnson, Jay K.

1984  Prehistoric settlement in the upper Yocona drainage, north Mississippi. Mississippi Archaeology 19(2):13-22.

1986 Rocks, river channels and prehistory on the lower Yalobusha. Mississippi Archaeology 21(1):2-42.

Little, Keith

2003 Late Holocene climatic fluctuations and culture change in southeast North America.  Southeastern Archaeology 22(1): 9-32.

McGahey, Sam

1993 Mississippi Paleoindian, Early Archaic survey. Mississippi Archaeology 28(2):1-

2002 The Short #3 site (22Pa750): phase two investigations. Mississippi Archaeology 37(1):1-44.

 Snowden, J. O., and Priddy, R. R.

1968 Loess investigations in Mississippi.  Mississippi Geological, Economic and Topographical Survey Bulletin 11, Jackson, MS.

 Stallings, Richard

1989 Factors in interpreting the prehistoric use of the Citronelle gravels in Mississippi. Mississippi Archaeology 24(1):35-58.

 Vogel, Gregory

2004 Earthworms and archaeology.  Worm Digest 35: 8-11.

Pedology (soils)