The SGA invites you to join us at the 2013 Spring Meeting, scheduled for Saturday, May 18, at the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, 301 Cherry Street, Macon (see map below). The theme for Archaeology Month and this year’s Spring Meeting is Digging and Diving into the Past: Celebrating 20 Years of Georgia Archaeology Awareness. The SGA is proud to return to Macon to celebrate this important anniversary.
Pre-registration will be available online (click here), or at the door. If you prefer to register and pay by mail you may do so by sending in a completed registration form, which you may download by clicking here. Attendees to all SGA activities are expected to be registered (including if you just attend afternoon events). The amount is members $10, non-members $15, and students $5 (all per person). You can also sign up and pre-pay for a box lunch (i.e., Subway sandwich, chips, cookie, and a drink).
The meeting will begin with registration and check-in followed by a welcome announcement, then launch into presentations on “Research, Education, and Outreach at Georgia Archaeological Sites.” We’ll take a short break and then hear presentations on “Recent Investigations at Ocmulgee National Monument.”
We’ll have a short business meeting, offer the SGA-Georgia Ports Authority presentation “Georgia Time Capsule,” then adjourn for lunch. You must pre-pay if you want a box lunch.
We’ll reconvene at Ocmulgee National Monument, with a tour of the “Plateaus” by Dan Bigman beginning at 1:30 PM. Then, attendees will be on their own to visit the newly renovated NPS Museum or visit Dunlap Hill (with the Mississippian period Dunlap Mound and the Historic Dunlap House) to the north of the Museum. Attendees are also invited to visit Fort Hawkins near the Monument.
A PDF of the schedule, with event times, for the SGA’s 2013 Spring meeting can be accessed by clicking here. The presenters and their titles and abstracts are:
Jim D’Angelo, The Search for Fort Peachtree
The symbolic importance of Fort Peachtree for the history of Atlanta is well known. However, the exact location of this iconic fort has only been guessed at by historians and archaeologists working in the vicinity of the Indian village of Standing Peachtree where, according to contemporary eye-witness accounts, the fort was located. Re-examination of those original accounts in light of a trove of new documents found at the National Archives during the summer of 2012 has shed new and corrective light on this old story. This presentation deals not only with the location of the fort, but with new facts about Fort Daniel’s role in the venture, new details about the date and construction of Peachtree Road, surprising new information about the construction of a flatboat and a skiff used in an experimental supply run down the Chattahoochee to General Floyd’s supply base at Fort Mitchell, and new details concerning the context of this entire venture.
Pat Garrow, Dating the Cave Spring Cabin
The Cave Spring cabin was identified in 2010 when wooden siding was removed from what had been known since 1902 as the Green Hotel building in downtown Cave Spring, Georgia. The cabin was revealed as a two-story log structure, and there was immediate speculation that it dated prior to Cherokee Removal. Subsequent historical research failed to place improvements on the property prior to Removal. Limited archaeological excavations conducted by Cultural Resource Analysts, Inc. (CRA) in December, 2012, utilizing volunteer labor recovered an artifact sample from the rear of the Cabin that was suitable for dating its construction. This paper discusses the available historical data on the Cabin and presents the results of the test excavations.
Keith Stephenson, Karen Smith, and Kevin Kiernan, Preston Holder’s WPA Excavation of the Truncated Mound at the Evelyn Site in Glynn County
The Evelyn Plantation site, near Darien, was first investigated by Preston Holder and a small Depression-era workforce in 1937. The site consisted of at least five conical sand mounds, and a low-lying, rectangular, flat-topped mound labeled Mound B. In the late-18th century, William Bartram described this mound as a “tetragon terrace” of European construction (i.e., a fort). Holder’s excavations revealed that Mound B was actually prehistoric in origin. Truncated, pyramidal mounds were constructed during the Woodland period but are more commonly associated with the Mississippi period. The dissimilarity between flat-topped mounds of these periods, as characterized archaeologically, involved the use of their platform summits which served different purposes and activities. Our discussion entails a determination of whether Mound B is affiliated with either the Woodland Swift Creek or the Mississippian Savannah-period occupation at Evelyn Plantation.
Andrew Post and Susan Fishman-Armstrong, Involving the West Georgia Area in an Education Outreach Program
The Antonio J. Waring, Jr. Archaeology Laboratory formalized its Education Outreach Program in CY2003 to include an On-Site Mock Excavation, a Guided Tour, and two Traveling Teaching Trunks for 3rd-8th grades to educate the public about archaeology cultural heritage. Due to the economic recession and changes in educational standards, program usage has declined. The purpose of this research is to identify public and education needs to increase program usage. Research was conducted with local school curriculum coordinators, UWG faculty, available literature, and other museum education programs. Classroom related activities (i.e., the teaching trunks) are preferred to correspond with current Georgia Standards.
Richard Moss, Digging with Foresters: Fostering Intra-agency Archaeology Awareness at DNR
Archaeologists at DNR HPD are actively involved in public outreach throughout the State. But HPD can also boast of close relationships with its sister divisions inside DNR, for which it provides technical assistance in CRM. Cooperation with these divisions is developed, maintained, and enhanced by continual internal efforts to educate and inform agency resource managers on the importance of preserving archaeological resources on state land. This paper is a retrospective on my time at DNR assisting the foresters of the Wildlife Resources Division, which was a great learning experience in promoting archaeology awareness. This culminated in an educational field workshop involving preliminary survey at 9HT238, a prehistoric site discovered in a pine stand near the Ocmulgee River at Oaky Woods WMA.
Daniel P. Bigman, Recent Investigations of Ocmulgee’s Ditches
Ocmulgee’s ditches are two of the most puzzling enigmas in Ocmulgee National Monument. Kelly originally conceived of the features as a series of “dugouts,” subterranean dwellings that did not enclose the North, Middle, and South Plateau bluff. Recent electrical resistivity and ground penetrating radar surveys indicate that both the inner and outer ditches did continue past the limit indicated by Kelly. Further, a reanalysis of artifact counts from these two ditches in light of ceramic chronological refinements for central Georgia suggests that Ocmulgee’s Early Mississippian inhabitants built the outer ditch first. This finding supports an initial assessment by Hally and Williams.
Daniel P. Bigman and John Cornelison, Toward a New Understanding of the Historic Creek Occupation at Ocmulgee: Complimentary Work by SEAC and UGA
Drake’s Field, a series of baseball fields, was gifted to Ocmulgee National Monument in 1991. This expanded the size of the park by approximately 6 ha to the west. This paper presents the results of a compliance project carried out following the gift, but before re-chaining of the fence that enclosed the area. The shovel test survey and two test pits primarily recovered historic artifacts, many dating to the historic Creek occupation. This project redefined the boundaries of the Creek town surrounding the English Carolinian Trading Post. Two decades later, a geophysical survey carried out in Drake’s Field identified anomalies that likely represent Creek buildings and burials. Furthermore, the distribution of anomalies helped inform the possible layout of the Creek town.
Matthew Jennings, Displaying Ocmulgee: Archaeology and Tourism at the Early National Monument
As soon as Civil Works Administration workers and professional archaeologists began to pull Ocmulgee’s treasures from the earth, boosters and scientists alike saw the need to put these objects on display and use them to draw visitors to a region threatened by the decline of the cotton economy. Tourism and the scientific study of artifacts were deeply intertwined from the very beginning of the excavations, and continue to be connected into the present. This paper treats the earliest displays at Ocmulgee, from the converted work shed that served as the first “museum” on the site through the triumphant opening of the Art Moderne Vistor Center and state-of-the-art research facility in 1951. How we came to know what we know about Ocmulgee, and how scientists publicized their findings, comprise nearly as compelling a tale as what we have learned from the site.
We look forward to celebrating the twentieth anniversary of annual Archaeology Awareness events with you at the SGA’s Macon meeting.
Read all stories on this website about the SGA’s 2013 Spring meeting by clicking here. Read all stories on this website about 2013 Archaeology Month by clicking here.
May is Archaeology Month in Georgia, and thanks to the hard work of SGA members across the state, this year the month of May is packed with exciting events in nearly every corner of Georgia. Just a few of the planned events include: tours and hands-on activities at Etowah, Camp Lawton, Fort Daniel, and a chance to visit the ArchaeoBus in Stone Mountain. Click here to view the full schedule of Archaeology Month events, and click here to access the official Archaeology Month brochure.
Organizers of the 2013 Archaeology Day invite you to attend on Saturday, May 4th between 10AM and 4PM. The event will be held at the historic Ezekiel Harris House located at 1822 Broad Street in Augusta, Georgia. Admission is free. 