ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on conditions in the natural environment that may favor preservation of artifacts manufactured of organic materials and a model is proposed that can be used to predict the locations of archaeological wet sites. In order to produce a covering rule that can predict where archaeological wet sites occur and to assess how these sites will be impacted if they are disturbed, it is necessary to examine the importance of variables such as bedrock, climate, vegetation, chemistry, and drainage (oxidation) that have been involved in the formation, deformation, and loss of Florida's organic soils. Bedrock also affects drainage to a certain extent; however, most limestones, marls, clays, and sands tend to be more or less porous and the development of organic soils above them probably depends to a great extent upon a rise in the water table that decreases drainage through solution channels in the limestone bedrock.
