Environment and Settlement on the Southwestern Louisiana Prairies: A Cultural Resources Survey in the Bayou Mallet Watershed

摘要

The Bayou Mallet Watershed is situated in southwestern Louisiana between the towns of Opelousas and Jennings, occupying an area of 43,740 hectares, and stretching in a southwest-northeast direction. The northern and southern boundaries of the watershed are marked by natural levee ridges of either relict Pleistocene Red River channels or Pleistocene-age Mississippi River crevasse courses. The watershed is situated on a relatively flat area of Louisiana known as the Prairie surface or Prairie Terrace. This name was derived from the natural grasslands which once covered most of the surface. The modern drainage pattern, including Bayou Mallet, has developed within the interlevee areas of the Prairie Terrace. In order to determine if proposed dredging within the watershed's drainage channels would be likely to affect cultural resources, Coastal Environments, Inc., was contracted to perform a cultural resources survey of an 18% environmentally stratified sample of the channels.