ABSTRACT
Traditionally, midwestern archaeologists have acknowledged the possibility of buried Archaic sites in river valleys but, nevertheless, they have been content to develop settlement pattern models from surface data (Brown 1981). Because Early and Middle Archaic sites are often scarce, many of these studies have concluded that early prehistoric groups rarely inhabited river valleys (Luch-terhand 1970: Munson and Harn 1971). This scarcity is usually interpreted as a cultural preference or the result of geologic processes; that is, riverine environments were not exploited and early sites have been deeply buried or washed away. All too frequently, a cultural explanation is accepted without taking into consideration geologic factors. When there is ample evidence that sites are buried in river valleys, one must remain skeptical of cultural models of river valley settlement distribution that do not evaluate the impact of geologic processes on the visibility of the archaeological record for every period. In order to develop an accurate model of prehistoric riverine adaptation, it will be necessary to have information from the pertinent landscape surfaces of each period under investigation.
