News

Fall OAC Meeting October 3, 2025

OAC 50th Anniversary Meeting Program

When: Friday, October 3, 2025
Where: Cardinal Room, Ohio History Connection and online via Zoom

The Membership Meeting is for current OAC members only, a separate Zoom link is available for those who cannot attend in person for the morning and afternoon sessions. For questions or more information please reach out to Chris Kraska at chriskraska@gmail.com. 

Below is the preliminary schedule for the day. 

Zoom links for members who cannot attend in-person will be sent out at a later date.

9:15 AM 

Introduction by Beth Hoag and Chris Kraska

9:20-9:50 AM     

Future Directions in CRM Archaeology and Trails of Breadcrumbs for our future Selves: Update on the Airlie House 2.0 SAA Task Force.

By Kevin Nolan

After a multi-year planning effort, the Airlie House 2.0 workshops were held in May 2024 with the modest goal of assessing the current state of CRM archaeological practice and paving the way for the next 50 years of CRM archaeology. Even this modest plan has been impacted by recent upheaval at the federal level creating challenges and opportunities that didn’t exist before. The SAA Task Force chaired by Signe Snortland and Rebecca Hawkins is forging ahead on several of the action items from the workshop and adjusting others as situation merits. As the structure that existed during the 2024 workshop is being disassembled, we are also, in the words of Karen Mudar, documenting as much as we can so that we can leave breadcrumbs for our future selves on how to rebuild what worked, and know what needs to be improved. This update will encompass accomplishments towards action items, summaries of recent partner meetings, and plans for pushing through to the completion of an Airlie House 2.0 report to be published by the SAA press.

9:55-10:55 AM     

Forum on Best Practices in the Identification and Evaluation of Archaeological Sites.

By Jarrod Burks, Alex Corkum, Thomas Grooms, Kevin Nolan, and Joe Snider, moderated by Al Tonetti.

This forum will provide contract archaeologists and the State Historic Preservation Office an opportunity to discuss what are (and are not) best practices in identifying and evaluating archaeological sites in regulatory processes. Participants were given a series of questions from which to formulate their responses.

11:00-11:45 AM

Business Meeting, Awards Presentations, Past-Presidents Comments

By Beth Hoag

11:45 AM - 12:25 PM

Lunch (complimentary box lunches available to in-person presenters, past-Presidents, and OAC members if preordered).

12:25-1:25 pm

Symposium on Paleoindian Site Identification and Evaluation

By David Lamp, Andrew Tremayne, Joseph A.M. Gingerich

1:30-3:00 PM

Symposium on Recent Investigations of the Hopewell Road

By Brad Lepper and Milo Rossi, John Soderberg, Jamie Davis and Joe Snider

3:05-3:40 PM

The State Line Site: Overview and Progress Report on ASC Group’s Phase III Investigation

By Kevin Schwarz et al.

This presentation provides an overview and progress report of ASC Group’s archaeological investigation of the State Line site at the Ohio-Indiana border near Cincinnati, Ohio. The State Line site is primarily a Middle Fort Ancient Anderson Phase village (ca. AD 1050-AD 1300), with earlier cultural components. ASC Group, Inc. has led ongoing archaeological investigations at this site as part of the National Historic Preservation Act compliance efforts for an intersection improvement project. A brief overview of field and laboratory research will be presented with a focus on nine or so identified Fort Ancient-period structures under the rubric of structural archaeology. The terminology, approaches, and insights from recently published research on ancient architecture of the Ohio Valley are being integrated with the new data from the State Line site. Specifically discussed will be the discovery and documentation of a large and unique wall trench structure believed to have been a community structure. Other topics will be touched upon including the regional identification of the State Line site with Fort Ancient culture and Mississippian cultures to the west and the methodologies adopted for the project. In approaching this project, ASC Group has relied on geophysical survey and human remains detection dogs to guide the field research and we will touch upon the results of each. We will also review the tribal consultation for this project and how all these methods have improved the results we have obtained in the complete excavation of the Area of Potential Effects of the project. Finally, we will discuss how the integration of field osteology into the excavation approach has helped to ensure compliance of the project with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

3:40-4:00 PM

Concluding Remarks and Q&A

By Al Tonetti and Chris Kraska

4:00 PM

Adjourn