Quick: what is the only installation built by the United States military during the settling of the interior of the continent to protect Indians from Indians (rather than settlers from Native Americans, or for some other purpose)?

Out in the middle of North America, in what is now the state of Nebraska, near the North Loup River, near the modern community of Elyria, is a Plains infantry outpost called Fort Hartsuff. The outpost was active from 1874–1881. Since some of the major buildings were constructed with concrete-like walls, they have survived to this day. Fort Hartsuff is now a Nebraska State Historical Park.

In short, the Pawnee were an agricultural peoples in the 1850s, growing crops and supplementing their foodstuffs with meat from seasonal bison hunts. Because they were semi-sedentary, they were afflicted more European diseases like cholera and small pox than their nomadic neighbors, the Lakota Sioux. During this period, the Lakota population increased, they gained hunting territory, and harassed the Pawnee.

As Gary Wells notes:

By 1857, the Pawnee were so destitute that they signed the Treaty of Table Creek, giving up rights to all of their land in Nebraska in exchange for a small reservation of thirty miles along the Loup River, fifteen miles wide (present day Nance County), small annual payments and protection from the Lakota, by the U.S. Army.  The U.S. Government did a poor job fulfilling their part of the treaty, as the Civil War diverted money and soldiers away from the west.  Retaliation for the Pawnee against the Lakota finally came in 1864, when the Department of the Platte (district army headquarters) requested Pawnee volunteers to join the Army in their fight against the Sioux and Cheyenne, under the command of Frank North, as the Pawnee Scouts.  Frank had worked at the Pawnee Agency for many years and spoke fluid Pawnee.  He and his brother Luther North led the Pawnee Scouts on numerous engagements, including protecting the workers building the Transcontinental Railroad in Nebraska, and removing the Cheyenne from the Republican Valley in the Campaign of 1869, with General Carr commanding and Buffalo Bill Cody as scout.  During this campaign, Major Frank North was credited with the killing of the Cheyenne Chief Tall Bull, at the Battle of Summit Springs, and honored by the Nebraska Legislature in 1870 for his part in the Campaign.  The Pawnee called him the “Great White Father”.

Few settlers had pushed into the Loup River Valley before 1870, probably due to the proximity of the Pawnee Reservation on the lower Loup.  Even though the Pawnee were relatively harmless, it would have taken real courage for early settlers to travel through their villages, to reach the rich farmland beyond.  That same year, the Paul brothers (J.N. and N.J.) and the North brothers (Frank and Luther) departed from Columbus with a small group of men, and went up the Loup to the forks on a hunting trip.  That trip resulted in dreams of a cattle ranch and the determination to establish a new county called “Howard”.

Once Howard County was formed, it drew new settlers into the Loup Valley, but the Lakota were still using the trail down the Loup River Valleys, to raid the Pawnee on their reservation.  The Norths and the Pauls knew that these new settlers would need to be protected, so a request was sent to General C. C. Auger (Christopher Columbus Auger), commander of the Department of the Platte, in Omaha, to send troops.  The government had been lax on protecting the Pawnee, but with the white settlers in danger, two companies of soldiers were dispatched.

It took a while for Fort Hartsuff to be established. Wells continues:

By early September of 1874, the new permanent fort construction was underway.  It was across the river near the famous trail on present-day Bean Creek.  By December of 1874 some of the new fort’s buildings were complete.  All government supplies, soldiers and tentage had been removed to the new site and Camp Ruggles was soon forgotten to all but a few.

This new permanent fort was not to be made out of wood, but a lime, gravel and cement mixture, resembling today’s concrete.  Rather than transport large amounts of lime from eastern Nebraska, the quartermaster advertised locally for a contractor to supply the lime.  Joseph “Doc” Beebe, a close friend and neighbor of the North family in Columbus, bid and won the contract.  Doc built three lime kilns in the hills east of the North Loup River in northern Howard County (east of present day Cotesfield) and burned chalk-rock, taken form the nearby side-hills, in the kilns, using wood from the surrounding canyons, to produce his quick-lime product. (All three kilns are still visible today.)

On completion of Fort Hartsuff, Doc Beebe started construction of a two-story hotel, using the same construction techniques used at the fort.  The new hotel became known as the “Concrete Hotel” or the “Half-Way House”, as it was on the main supply road, half-way between Fort Hartsuff and the rail line in Grand Island. The eighty-mile trip was too long to travel in one day, so those traveling back and forth would stop at the Half-way House to eat and spend the night.

Portrayal of Native American life on Jekyll Island (original painting by Melissa Crawford, Art Major at the University of West Georgia).

People have called the small barrier island now known as Jekyll home for many centuries, but only the most obvious and recent reminders of that history are usually recognized today. Each year thousands of visitors are introduced to the splendid “cottages” and manicured landscapes of the Jekyll Island Club and their connection with the rich and famous industry giants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many also see the ruins of tabby structures that stand as silent memorials to English colonization of the Georgia coast during the 18th century and to the later plantation endeavors of the French owners of the island, the DuBignon family.

As important as these historic resources are, they represent only part of the total cultural heritage of Jekyll Island. What now stands above the ground is a fraction of the fragile evidence that marks this island’s remarkable past. Much more survives below the ground as archaeological evidence—the buried structural elements, landscape features, artifacts and food remains from the day to day lives of people over the millennia. At least 95 percent of the total patrimony of the island preceded British interests here. This place was the home of Native Americans for more than 4000 years before the first European arrived. Their history is Jekyll Island’s hidden cultural heritage, a past marked by traces of oyster shell on the ground surface and the buried archaeological remains left behind by countless generations.

Archaeological research has been undertaken from time to time on Jekyll Island for over 50 years, providing a basic sketch of the island’s cultural history. Dozens of archaeological sites have been recorded through survey efforts and limited excavations on the island and its nearby hammocks. The best-known historic sites—Horton House and Millionaire’s Village—were also the locations of major prehistoric sites, indicating that these high-ground areas that are easily accessible by water have remained prime real estate for many centuries. Other, mostly smaller, prehistoric settlements are located elsewhere on the island where good access was offered to important food resources.

The earliest known Native American occupation of Jekyll Island was by an early foraging culture associated with the St. Simons phase. Dating to as early as 2400 B.C., these people may have lived in permanent settlements used as central bases for collecting estuarine, riverine, and oak-forest food resources during a time of rising sea levels and evolving ecosystems. Overall population density was low all along the coast, with groups living on the barrier islands in settlements atop and around shell rings (large ring-shaped mounds of oyster shells and other food refuse) and along freshwater rivers on top of large shell mounds (which also were deposits shell and other refuse). Occupation was concentrated on the northern end of Jekyll Island at this time, perhaps the result of short-term visits by foraging groups from large nearby sites on St. Simons Island. However, the possibility exists that a shell ring may have been located along the northern edge of Jekyll Island in an area that now has been submerged by rising sea level and eroded by tidal actions and currents.

When sea level dropped to a temporary low-stand around 1,000 B.C., there were dramatic changes in the coastal ecosystem and St. Simons phase settlements were disrupted and their populations dispersed. An archaeological culture known as the Refuge phase then developed along the coast, perhaps representing descendents of the St. Simons phase groups, but no sites of this period have been recorded on Jekyll Island.

Occupation resumed on Jekyll Island sometime between roughly 500 B.C. and A.D. 700. Probably the first to resettle the island were small bands of semi-nomadic hunters-fishers-gatherers who were seasonal visitors to the island during the Deptford phase. These people overlapped with others of a different cultural tradition known as Swift Creek, marked by groups who immigrated to the coast from inland areas of Georgia. The largest identified Swift Creek settlement was located in the interior of the island and contained an earthen burial mound.

Sporadic occupation on the island occurred during the following Wilmington phase, beginning about A.D. 700 and continuing for some 300 years. Very little is known about the genesis of this culture and its adaptive patterns anywhere along the Georgia coast. It is suspected that small residential groups visited the island intermittently during this time for hunting, fishing, and gathering purposes.

Intensive Native American settlement occurred on Jekyll Island during the Savannah phase, beginning about A.D. 1000 and perhaps continuing until Spanish contact. This was associated with large populations who lived in permanent villages and had a mixed economy based upon horticulture (growing maize, beans, and squash) along with substantial reliance on estuarine and oak forest resources. A central adaptive characteristic of this socially and politically complex culture was the periodic movement of family groups from their villages during the year to harvest seasonally available resources in other areas. The prehistoric archaeological sites at the Horton House and Millionaires Village date primarily to the Savannah phase and, although severely disturbed in places by historical construction activities, they are two of the largest and most complex Native American settlements on Jekyll Island.

Little information is available about Native American occupation on Jekyll Island during the early historic period. The island was known to the Spaniards as the Isla de Ballenas (Island of Whales) and while 17th-century Franciscan missions among the Mocama natives evidently were located to the north on St. Simons Island and to the south on Cumberland Island, none were reported on Jekyll Island. However, archaeological evidence indicates there was a native presence on the island during the 16th and 17th centuries. Irene phase and Mission period native pottery types, more common at sites associated with the Guale in areas north of Jekyll Island, are rare but present at some of Jekyll’s archaeological sites. Pottery vessels associated with the Mocama in more southern areas of the Georgia coast appear to be very similar to earlier Savannah phase wares, suggesting the possibility that some sites on Jekyll Island now assigned to the late prehistoric period may contain materials that actually reflect Native American occupations during the Spanish Mission period.

Only the barest of details about Jekyll Island’s Native American past are known and much remains to be learned about this heritage. Archaeologists now have many more questions than they do answers. Buried beneath the feet of visitors to Jekyll Island is a complex and multidimensional puzzle of archaeological evidence, each piece an irreplaceable clue about the lives of people in the distant past who once called this island their home. As archaeological methods and scientific techniques advance, more and more will be learned about this hidden past and our lives in the present will be enriched by a better understanding of that heritage. However, the pieces of our puzzle are fragile and once destroyed are forever lost. In recognition of their importance to current and future generations, archaeological sites of Jekyll Island are protected under Georgia laws and Federal statutes, with civil and criminal penalties for their destruction or disturbance.

An artifact of Jekyll Island’s history of tourism.

Jekyll Island, owned by the people of Georgia and managed on their behalf by the Jekyll Island Authority, is a natural and cultural treasure to be both enjoyed and protected. Visitors to our remarkable island should be aware of the past hidden beneath their feet, marvel at its mysteries and untold stories, always act to sustain rather than disturb it, and walk away as advocates for archaeological preservation. The past is present on Jekyll Island and its legacies precious.

View east down Williamsburg’s Duke of Gloucester Street, from Google Earth, a free downloadable program.

If you want to have coffee in an historic eighteenth century coffeehouse, you can now do so! The drinks that are offered are tea, chocolate, and, of course, coffee!

R. Charlton’s Coffeehouse was dedicated at Colonial Williamsburg on the afternoon of Friday, November 20th, 2009. The present building is rebuilt from the ground up. The original structure is only known from archaeological and archival data. Notes the Colonial Williamsburg website and press release:

Archaeological evidence recovered from the coffeehouse site reflects the importance of fine dining as well as the consumption of tea, coffee and chocolate. Charlton offered an epicurean menu that included fish, shellfish, all kinds of meat and game, even peacock. Besides hot beverages, patrons could choose from a section of wines, beer and spirits. A fragment of a Cherokee pipe suggests the presence of Indians who may have been part of an official delegation. Other finds include a number of wig curlers, indicating Richard Charlton’s connection to the wig-making business, and several bones from an anatomical skeleton that was likely used in scientific presentations.

R. Charlton’s Coffeehouse is built on its original foundations with 18th-century construction techniques and in compliance with modern building codes. The finished reconstruction will appear as close to the original structure as historical, archaeological and architectural evidence permits. It incorporates substantial portions of the building’s original brick foundations. The one-and-a-half-story framed portion of the building—35 feet square—is constructed of hand-sawn timber framing covered with cypress weatherboards and white cedar roof shingles. A central brick chimney allows two of the three first floor rooms to have functional fireplaces, while in the cellar a massive hearth is the central feature of the reconstructed kitchen. Research indicates that at least two of three first floor rooms were used for serving food and beverages which were prepared in the cellar. Other rooms on the first and second floors may have been rented or used for lodging or living quarters.

The general history page of the Colonial Williamsburg website notes:

Williamsburg was the thriving capital of Virginia when the dream of American freedom and independence was taking shape and the colony was a rich and powerful land stretching west to the Mississippi River and north to the Great Lakes. For 81 formative years, from 1699 to 1780, Williamsburg was the political, cultural, and educational center of what was then the largest, most populous, and most influential of the American colonies. It was here that the fundamental concepts of our republic—responsible leadership, a sense of public service, self-government, and individual liberty—were nurtured under the leadership of patriots such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and Peyton Randolph.

Tickets to Colonial Williamsburg start at $36 for adults, so your visit to R. Charlton’s Coffeehouse will not be inexpensive, but where else can you enjoy am eighteenth-century style coffeehouse!

Maps, a video of the coffeehouse, and an online tour can also be found at the Colonial Williamsburg website.

All photos used in this story are copyright 2009 by Colonial Williamsburg, and were obtained from their website.

Artist’s rendering of the Roman town of Venta Icenorum during boom times, by Sue White, provided by the University of Nottingham to Science Daily.

In July 2009, Science Daily, an online news website, published an article about the Roman town of Venta Icenorum at Caistor St. Edmund in Norfolk, England, describing the results of recent research conducted by archaeologists with the University of Nottingham

A recent high-resolution geophysical survey, which does not require excavation or other ground disturbance, revealed, according to the University of Nottingham:

the town’s water supply system (detecting the iron collars connecting wooden water pipes), and the series of public buildings including the baths, temples and forum, known from earlier excavations.

Nevertheless, among all these architectural features, the survey showed areas that had not been built up, and remained open. Thus, the dense urban area that previous researchers believed characterized this settlement was not discovered by the survey.

Unlike many Roman settlements in the British Isles, this one was abandoned in Medieval times, which means there is less superimposed construction and disturbance that alter the earlier occupation.

Google Earth satellite view of remains of the Roman town of Venta Icenorum.

Many archaeologists believe that, although geophysical surveys and other “black box” studies can reveal important information about subsurface remains without disturbing them, on balance they are no substitute for the detailed data than can be recovered by excavation.

What do you think?

More details on the archaeological project can be found here.

Oblique view of Moundville facing south, with the Black Warrior River in the foreground, from Google Earth.

John H. Blitz doesn’t mince words. Answering the question who built the mounds at the famous Mississippian settlement next to the Black Warrior River at Moundville, Alabama, Blitz writes: “We don’t know” (page 4).

In a slim volume (116 pages; also called a “pocket guide”) simply titled “Moundville” (University of Alabama Press, 2008), Blitz, an archaeologist on the faculty of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, summarizes “the story of Moundville and the people who once lived there” (page 6). Liberally illustrated with color and black-and-white photographs, this book is easy to read yet chock-full of information.

Blitz tells both the story of research at the site and the developing understanding of the Mississippian period, and the role of the Moundville community in the local area, and in the Mississippian Southeast.

Moundville’s first substantial occupation began in approximately AD 1120. Residents “lived in small one-room houses dispersed across the natural terrace above the river” (page 61). Moundville was one of many settlements at this time that were built around civic-ceremonial mounds. At Moundville, people built two non-residential raised areas archaeologists call platforms, because they seem to have been constructed as a special place to erect special buildings.

Around AD 1200 Moundville’s resident population increased dramatically, and people constructed more monumental architecture—a complex with mounds, a large plaza or open area lacking buildings, and an encircling palisade wall, and many new houses. The population change is too much to have been a natural demographic increase; instead, people must have immigrated to the community. Perhaps people were attracted by the prospect of living in a palisaded (essentially fortified) settlement, where residents felt safer. Indeed, Blitz says (page 65) about a thousand people lived within the palisaded area, and Moundville was probably the political and ritual capital of the region.

By shortly after AD 1300, that is, less one hundred years later, or only a few generations, Moundville’s population had decreased and it had become “a sparsely populated ceremonial center” (page 66). People moved out for reasons archaeologists have yet to identify. Perhaps there were shortages in important resources, like firewood and game. Perhaps people felt safer so they moved away from the palisaded area. Perhaps leaders made lower-ranked people leave. “Whatever the case,” Blitz writes on page 68, “Moundville became a place of pilgrimage, ceremonies, and funerals.” Moundville was not a ghost town (page 68); houses in the northern part of the settlement continued to be occupied, and graves with fancy highly crafted burial goods continued to be created.

After AD 1450, Moundville gradually declined in population and funerary activity diminished. Burials from this period lack the fancy grave goods that characterized those of the previous period. Although activities at Moundville declined, other nearby civic-ceremonial settlements also with mounds continued to be occupied and important (page 70). Some parts of southeastern North America suffered extensive drought in the 1400s, which could have affected residents of Moundville and the Moundville region. Further, in 1540, Hernando de Soto and his army passed through small villages in this area, although there’s not evidence they came to Moundville itself. The Spanish brought Old World diseases that devastated Native American populations, and “Moundville was abandoned by 1600, if not before” (page 71).

Researchers continue moderate excavations at Moundville, and also reanalyze collections stored there. Continued research across the Southeast also amplify our understanding of this dramatic settlement, now the 320-acre Moundville Archaeological Park.

http://moundville.ua.edu/home.html

The summary in this review just skims the surface of the detailed material Blitz presents. Some readers may find his fictional story about what it might have been like to live at Moundville the most thought-provoking section of this small yet worthwhile publication (pages 85–97).

Read about Moundville in the online Encyclopedia of Alabama here.

On the highest hill in Astoria, Oregon, near the mouth of the Columbia River, stands a 125-foot tall column, patterned after Trajan’s Column in Rome. The exterior of both have a series of carved scenes winding around and up the column. The Astoria Column was built in 1926, and has an interior stairway of over 160 steps, and observation deck near the top.

The Astoria Column has fourteen different scenes carved by Italian immigrant artist Attilo Pusterla. They are in temporal order, and begin at the base of the column and wind upward. However, by the time of the dedication of the monument in July 1926, only a portion of the sgraffito bas-relief carved scenes were complete. The now-complete scenes, if unwound, would extend for over 500 feet.

The carvings quickly began to deteriorate in this location, exposed to storms from the Pacific and the freeze-thaw of winter. It was only in the mid-1990s, with the assistance of conservators from J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, that the column’s art was better stabilized.

Even a cursory examination of cross-cultural data indicates that around the globe, in many societies, peoples with many belief systems have built structures important to them on high places. In addition, the structures are often unusually tall when compared to residential buildings. Indeed, important buildings are often tall, large, or both.

Why do you think this is so?

Website of Friends of the Astoria Column.

Wikipedia entry on Trajan’s Column.

An important event in the history of the telephone happened on Jekyll Island. If you wander around the historic area south of the Jekyll Island Clubhouse, now the Jekyll Island Club Hotel, you will find a plexiglass box encompassing an old telephone. A plaque erected by the Dixie Chapter of the Telephone Pioneers of America below the phone dated January 1965 reads:

The first transcontinental telephone call was transmitted by a telephone instrument of this type on January 23, 1915. Mr. Theodore N. Vail, President of American Telephone and Telegraph Company, talked from Jekyll Island to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone in New Your; Thomas A. Watson, Assistant to Dr. Bell, in San Francisco; and to President Woodrow Wilson in Washington, D.C.

Thus, four men at four locations participated in that first transcontinental call. The AT&T website notes that:

At one point during the call, someone asked Professor Bell if he would repeat the first words he ever said over the telephone. He obliged, picking up the phone and repeating “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.” To which Watson, in San Francisco, replied, “It would take me a week now.”

The modern company AT&T used to be American Telephone and Telegraph Company. In 1908, Theodore N. Vail, President of the company, prioritized completion of a transcontinental telephone line. Their goal was to have the transcontinental line open in time for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, scheduled for 1915 in San Francisco.

The final pole for the transcontinental phone line was erected and the line strung in June 1914, but officials waited for the Exposition before they made the first call, to heighten the fanfare.

Why was Mr. Vail on Jekyll Island for this historic event? How does this compare to our modern satellite and cell phone services? Why are new phone systems in the Third World most commonly cell networks?

Panama-Pacific International Exposition on the web.

Downloadable digital copy of Exposition Fact-Book: Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco, 1915.

Jekyll Island Club Hotel website.

Quick: where in the world is the largest concentration of Bronze Age graves?

Read on….

Bahrain is a large island in a shallow bay on the west side of the Persian Gulf called the Gulf of Bahrain. Bahrain’s modern residents can cross a series of causeways that link the island to Saudia Arabia to the west. Most of the island is relatively low-lying, flat, and arid.

Due to the petroleum industry, the country of Bahrain has had a booming economy over the last generation or so. The country also has a strong banking sector. Accompanying population growth has meant the expansion of suburban neighborhoods westward from the capital of Manama, in the northeast part of Bahrain.

New York Times photograph by Shawn Baldwin, captioned “Hundreds of burial mounds near the village of A’ali in Bahrain. The country has the world’s heaviest concentration of graves dating from the Bronze Age.”

This expansion and development threatens a landscape peppered with Bronze Age burial mounds. In fact, in an article published by the New York Times on September 17, 2009, author Michael Slackman says this is “the heaviest concentration of graves dating from the Bronze Age found anywhere in the world.” At present, some 35 areas are set aside to preserve clusters of mounds. Slackman writes:

Most of the graves contain a death chamber shaped like a boot on its side. The body was placed in the fetal position while personal items, ceramic pots, personal seals and knives were stored in the toe. The value of the graves is not, necessarily, in what they contain but in what they tell about the lives, values and funerary practices of an ancient civilization.

Google Earth screen grab of one of A’ali’s larger mound fields, now split by a divided highway.

The community of A’ali (also spelled Aali and Ali) is currently favored by middle-class families building new homes on the outskirts of suburban Manama. In UNESCO World Heritage materials online:

The Ali mound field is a large mound field of primarily Late Type divided into two parts by a north-south running highway. At the north end of the burial mound field is a group of huge mounds, called “Royal Mounds”, which have during the growth of the village become part of its urban fabric, so that the immediate neighbourhood of these mounds has been utilized for habitation and small industries, e.g. pottery and lime production.

Historically, Bahrain “is believed to have been the capital of Dilmun, which lay along a trade route linking the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia,” Slackman writes. In fact, Dilmun’s capital may have been what is now the modern community of A’ali, southwest of Manama. Certainly, long-distance trading networks developed early and were extensive throughout this region. Archaeological finds from many locations along the Persian Gulf coast indicate the ongoing presence of Bronze Age merchant ships.

Preservationists have been working with UNESCO to make the mound fields a World Heritage Site, so far without success. Online UNESCO materials note:

The Burial Ensembles of Dilmun and Tylos are the expression of funerary practices of these civilizations which flourished in Bahrain from the mid 3rd millennium B.C. till the mid 1st millennium A.D. and which played essential roles in the organization of trade between Mesopotamia, South Arabia and the Indian subcontinent.

Bahrain’s Gulf Daily News published an article dated August 23, 2009, by Mohammed al A’ Ali. He reported on the clash between the forces for development and those pushing for preservation:

Historic burial mounds in a Bahraini village, which the government hoped to have recognised as a World Heritage Site, will be bulldozed to make way for a new road, houses and a public park. Councillors have successfully argued that 62 mounds in Buri, which date back as far as 4,000 years, were standing in the way of development. However, heritage chiefs are insisting on excavating the area, near Hamad Town, before allowing the bulldozers in.

That’s the story from a distant part of the world.

How about your area? What archaeological remains are threatened near your house or neighborhood? What preservation efforts are underway, if any? Comments?

National Geographic Traveler has highlighted fifty “Drives of a Lifetime.” A route along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts is one of the trips discussed. Several small detours would take you to historic places like the Tybee Island lighthouse.

The NatGeo overview reads:

Tybee Island Lighthouse in 2004.

A pungent, slightly salty smell permeates the air of the Low Country. Its source is the area’s pluff mud: the dark marsh soil left behind after the tide recedes. That smell—and term—is one of the Low Country’s many distinctive qualities. Other features that tend to leave lasting impressions on visitors include the wide, flat expanses of marsh grass, the shrill songs of tree frogs and katydids, the silhouettes of live oak trees, their long, arching limbs shrouded in silvery clumps of Spanish moss. Then there’s the seemingly omnipresent water—tidal marshes, rivers, estuaries, and the Atlantic Ocean—often with at least one shrimp boat trawling. On a road trip through the Low Country, Charleston and Savannah make convenient bookends. Some backtracking is required in between—out to the islands, and then back to the main road—but that just gives you more time to absorb the scenery. After all, this trip should not be rushed, but made slowly, Southern style.

Take this drive and you will see many historic buildings, including at the beginning city of Charleston, and at the end of the route in Savannah. Underground will be the remains of many archaeological sites. A few can be visited at museums and public parks.

After completing the driving tour, you could take short drive seaward from Savannah, and visit Tybee Island, where a series of lighthouses have helped sailors safely enter the Savannah River and go up to Savannah.

The Tybee Lighthouse website notes:

Ordered by General James Oglethorpe, Governor of the 13th colony, in 1732, the Tybee Island Light Station has been guiding mariners safe entrance into the Savannah River for over 270 years. The Tybee Island Light Station is one of America’s most intact having all of its historic support buildings on its five-acre site. Rebuilt several times the current lightstation displays its 1916 day mark with 178 stairs and a First Order Fresnel lens (nine feet tall).

Little known fact reported in the NatGeo story: the jungle scenes in the movie Forrest Gump, starring Tom Hanks, were shot on Hunting Island, South Carolina!

The Appalachian Trail is a famous footpath that extends over 2100 miles from Georgia north all the way into Maine, the northeastern-most state in the United States of America.

Although prehistoric peoples walked across the landscape, they probably wouldn’t have followed much of the route of the Appalachian Trail. Why? The earliest Euro-American traders and explorers also would have traveled along different routes, too. Why?

The Appalachian Trail is designed to stay on higher ground, in mountains and along high ridges. Mostly, it traverses lands owned by Federal or State governments, including the US Forest Service. These lands often were not settled and bought up because they were too rugged for agriculture, and the early Euroamerican settlers needed to live near their fields, and thus their food source.

What about the Native Americans, though? Depending on whether they grew much of their food, or instead sought it out across the landscape, their travel routes, whether along footpaths or via canoes, would have been between settlements and other preferred areas. Although they might sometimes have ventured into the mountains and to the mountain-tops, probably they spent the most time at lower elevations. Why would they have found it uncomfortable to live on top of Blood Mountain?

Many famous modern roads in Georgia follow historic footpaths. Indeed, historic footpaths often followed Native American footpaths. What did the Native Americans follow? Did they cut paths through the wilderness? Some scientists think at least some prehistoric footpaths followed animal trails, perhaps including paths made by mammoths.

Back to the shelter in the picture above. It is on Blood Mountain, which is the highest point in Georgia on the Appalachian Trail. Hikers take refuge their in inclement weather, and sleep there overnight. This is a beautiful place to camp, with great views, but there is no water close by. I was standing on a rock outcrop above the shelter when I took the picture, that’s why the perspective is so strange.

Satellite view of the Poverty Point site, from Google Earth. North is to the right in this screen grab.

Poverty Point is a famous prehistoric mound and village site in far northeast Louisiana, along a terrace adjacent to a tributary of the Mississippi River now called Bayou Marçon. The most dramatic earthen structures are a series of broken concentric arcs; however, several more traditionally shaped circular/rectangular mounds predate the arc-shaped earthworks. The arcs “face” east, or toward the rising sun. In the photo above, east is to the bottom of the image.

This summer (2009), the site, a State Park, hosted a research team lead by Diana Greenlee, of the Department of Geosciences at University of Louisiana at Monroe. According to the online news website thenewstar.com of Monroe, Greenlee and ULM students undertook excavations in the central plaza area to enable them to better understand buried circular features. Greenlee says that they can now date each of the four circles they tested. “We were able to establish that the different magnetic characteristics of the circles in the plaza correspond to different kinds of constructions,” she said, according to thenewstar.com article.

The Poverty Point are dated to the Terminal Archaic, approximately 1650–700 BC. Artifacts from the site include stone tools and other objects that came from afar, so the occupants of the site had access to a long-distance trading network, or traveled far themselves to bring these special objects back home.

The Louisiana park website for Poverty Point includes the text of a 1996 (second edition) volume on the site called “Poverty Point: A Terminal Archaic Culture of the Lower Mississippi Valley” by Jon L. Gibson. The text has been divided for easier loading and reading:

Download an archaeological report and list of artifacts recovered during recent research to locate, identify, and determine the level of preservation of as many locales as possible in the City of Savannah that are related to the October 9, 1779 Battle of Savannah. In short, for this research, archaeologists and SGA members Rita and Dan Elliott assembled all map information about the battle, then combined it with a recent digital map of the city to discover where prospecting for intact remains might be productive. They focused ground-truthing in modern green spaces, which again reminds us of another value of green spaces beyond their “greenness.” They examined specific locations in Madison Square, Lafayette Square, Emmet Park, Colonial Park Cemetery, Cuyler Park, Dixon Park, and Myers Park.

The report, authored by the Elliotts, is titled “Savannah under Fire, 1779: Identifying Savannah’s Revolutionary War Battlefield” and is dated June 2009. In part, the report abstract notes:

The project was extremely successful. Archeologists located a defensive ditch (almost two meters deep) dug by the British in 1779, defended during the battle, and in-filled by the Americans in 1782. The ditch lies in what is now Madison Square. Brick fragments/rubble in the ditch was part of the brick from the barracks razed by the British less than two weeks before the battle. The brick was used in the defenses around the Central redoubts and was pushed into the British trenches following the British evacuation of the city in 1782. In nearby Lafayette Square, archeologists discovered artifacts that were likely discarded by British soldiers occupying the defensive lines near and in the Central Redoubts, and by civilians associated with the soldiers. Emmet Park revealed a deep (3.5 ft.) feature that may have been constructed as part of the river battery associated with nearby Fort Prevost. Not only did archeologists discover evidence of numerous unmarked graves in Colonial Park Cemetery, but also an anomaly that appears to be one of the ditches running toward a redoubt. Archeologists found no evidence of Revolutionary War activity in Cuyler, Dixon, and Myers parks.

Perhaps surprisingly, the archaeological resources identified by this research were found to be in excellent condition.

This research was conducted by archaeologists with the Coastal Heritage Society, and primarily funded through the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program, with some matching funds from The LAMAR Institute. The Coastal Heritage Society, founded in 1975 and based in Savannah, has three historic archaeological sites: Old Fort Jackson National Historic Landmark, the Savannah History Museum, and the Roundhouse Railroad Museum.

Go to this page to download the report “Savannah under Fire, 1779″ and the project’s artifact catalogue. The report is a large PDF file, over 88 MB.

Overhead satellite view of Herodion/Herodium in screen grab from Google Earth, a free program available via the Internet.

Archaeology abounds in mysteries, a few solved and many, many unsolved.

One of the latter has been the location of Biblical King Herod’s tomb. Historical records introduce details that we would not know if all we had were archaeological data, and thus records—for example, manuscripts, diaries and bureaucratic archives—indicate real events and places that also become archaeological mysteries when we seek to substantiate them.

The cover story of the July 2009 issue of Smithsonian magazine discusses the search for Herod’s tomb, assumed from records to be in or around Herod’s fortified mountain-top palace, known variously as Herodion, Herodium, and Jabal al-Fraidees (the latter in Arabic). Barbara Krieger, author of the Smithsonian article, notes:

Ongoing excavations…reveal the impressive variety of facilities that Herod built at his desert retreat, including a royal theater that accommodated some 450 spectators.

In May 2007, an archaeological team headed by Professor Ehud Netzer of Hebrew University “discovered hundreds of red limestone fragments buried in the mountainside”—not in the palace at the top of the mountain.

Reassembling some of the pieces, Netzer concluded they were all that remained of a sarcophagus more than eight feet long with a gabled cover. The high quality of the craftsmanship suggested the sarcophagus was fit for a king. Plus, the extent of the fragmentation suggested that people had deliberately smashed it—a plausible outcome for the hated monarch’s resting place. Based on coins and other items found nearby, Netzer surmises that the desecration occurred during the first Jewish revolt against the Romans, from A.D. 66 to 73.

Read the Smithsonian article by clicking here.

Click here to read the May 2007 article announcing the find by ScienceDaily.

Read the Wikipedia entry on this dramatic hilltop archaeological site by clicking here.

Planning an outing to Etowah? Note that with budget cutbacks, the park is only open Thursdays through Saturdays, 9 am to 5 pm.

However, on Saturday, the 3rd of October, the park will be open for a torchlight tour from 7:30 to 9:30 pm. The walking tour will cover three-quarters of a mile, and includes a visit to the top of Mound A, the tallest and largest of the mounds on the site.

Entry fee is $2.50-$5.00.

Visit the Etowah Indian Mounds Historic Site webpage by clicking here.

Image of Springfield Baptist Church, the heart of Springfield community, in downtown Augusta. Image from Google Maps streetview (which is why there’s a funny partly opaque parallelogram on the right half of the image).

Next time you’re in Augusta, take the time to go downtown and visit the Springfield community. Springfield community is just west of the original downtown Augusta.

According to the fine website dedicated to the history of this community, Springfield was

a free African American community established around the time of the Revolutionary War. The Springfield Community was not an officially recognized subdivision of Augusta, Georgia. Despite this, the neighborhood, roughly bounded by the Savannah River and Jones Street on the north and south and Ninth and Fifteenth streets to the east and west, became one of the few homes to free African Americans who escaped the bonds of slavery prior to the Civil War. Springfield began to evolve after the American Revolution when many escaped slaves sought refuge, eventually growing into a thriving neighborhood in northeastern Augusta. In the South, free African Americans congregated in urban communities because they offered the best opportunities for employment. Although it is difficult to draw a boundary around this community, especially for its early years, Springfield came to represent a center of African American life in Augusta, especially in the late nineteenth century as official attitudes and policies became more segregationist. Over time, the symbol of this community, and its anchor, was the Springfield Baptist Church, still located at Twelfth and Reynolds Streets in Augusta.

Also,

The

Springfield Baptist is the nation’s oldest continually operating African American church. The congregation was established shortly after the American Revolution, probably between 1787 and 1793….

Springfield Baptist Church’s own website notes that:

Springfield Baptist Church is of national significance because it is the oldest African-American church in the United States; because it is an example of the determination of African-Americans to be independent during the slavery era; because the Georgia Republican Party originated there; because Morehouse College, which has produced so many nationally prominent black leaders, was founded there; and finally because the Springfield Church stands today as proof that African-American’s too can look to history with pride in their achievements.

For more information on the web:

Springfield community website, developed by New South Associates of Stone Mountain and funded by by the City of Augusta and the Georgia Department of Transportation, and the Federal Highway Administration.

New Georgia Encyclopedia on Augusta

Wikipedia entry on Augusta

Website of the Springfield Baptist Church

New Georgia Encyclopedia on Springfield Baptist Church

For a lesson plan on Springfield community, click here.

Thanks to Jim Pomfret, Archaeologist with the Georgia Department of Transportation, for suggesting that this topic might be of interest to readers of the SGA’s website.

In October 2008 I visited a circular Indian mound on the south bank of the Kanawha River, in South Charleston, West Virginia. The mound is right downtown and is the focus of the central municipal park. It is commonly called the Criel Mound.

According to signs near the mound, the Smithsonian Institution excavated the mound in 1883-84, and found thirteen human skeletons. This site was surrounded by a village on a terrace above the river’s floodplain. Houses were scattered for miles up and down the river. Nearby in the Kanawha Valley were other settlement clusters that also had mounds.

Based on artifacts the Smithsonian excavators found, the bodies in the mound were people dating to the Early Woodland period. Archaeologists call peoples who made and used these artifacts Adena culture. Sites with Adena complex artifacts are found across central and southern Ohio, as well as West Virginia, and east into Pennsylvania and New York, and west into Indiana.

The city is doing a pretty good job of preserving the mound by keeping trees from growing on the slopes or moundtop and keeping it from eroding, although two stairways have been carved into the mound’s flanks and trash cans are kept on top of the mound. However, the prehistoric context of the mound as part of a complex of civic-ceremonial buildings and open (plaza) areas is now mostly destroyed. The mound is encroached upon by a highway along the north side, a car dealership to the west, and the modern city to the south.

Editor’s Note

Back in late March 2009, GAAS and SGA member Dick Brunelle issued a challenge to thesga.org readers. He had read a January Weekly Ponder on a Copeland-Inglis brick found in an Atlanta brick street, and responded by asking who made the brick he had photographed at Hills and Dales, the Callaway family home in LaGrange, which had “LACLEDE KING” stamped on it. As a tease, he noted: The brick is more closely related to the Lewis and Clark Expedition than it is to covered bridges in Georgia. Member Jim D’Angelo was the only one to log in and comment on these brick controversies, among other things noting that he has a biography of John Randolph Copeland (1863-1935), partner in Copeland-Inglis Brick company. Now, Mr. Brunelle reveals the whoe story behind that enigmatic brick….

The answer…

Laclede Fire Brick Company as it appeared in 1854. On the hill behind the plant, can be seen the old Sublette mansion and nearby buildings of the sulphur springs resort. Clay was mined between the plant and the mansion.

The Birthplace of the Laclede King Brick

Bridge builder Horace King practiced his craft up and down the Chattahoochee River before and after his emancipation from slavery. The Townsend Truss structures he specialized in building required solid piers of durable material. Knowing he headed a family enterprise, brick making did not seem beyond possibility for this one time resident of LaGrange, Georgia.

At least, this is what I thought when I spotted the Laclede King brick at the beautiful estate of Hills and Dales in LaGrange. However, a search of Horace King family members did not come up with anyone named Laclede. Casting my net over the Internet, I fished up one Pierre Laclede Liquest.

We find that this enterprising man, a native of France, came to New Orleans in 1755. Soon, he dropped the Pierre from his name and his associates dropped the Liquest. This sort of name dropping was common among the early French in Louisiana. Laclede married an unattached woman in New Orleans, who was also enterprising and had accumulated money trading furs and other goods. She had previously been married to Auguste Rene Chouteau, and her son Auguste was now Laclede’s stepson. To further complicate an already confusing family relationship, stepson Auguste Chouteau had a half brother named Pierre. Some surmise he was a son of Laclede, but he was called Pierre Chouteau.

Laclede supposedly obtained trading rights from the last French governor for all the territory along the Missouri River. He and his stepson Auguste Chouteau established a trading post that Laclede named St Louis in April 1764 in honor of King Louis IX. Between the time he first set foot there, at the end of 1763, and the time of his death in 1788, Laclede had built up his name enough to bequeath it to things both material and political. As we now suspect, this includes bricks.

But, how can the name on our brick be close to Lewis and Clark? This clue was mainly intended to get the ponderer in the correct geographical area. However, both Chouteaus could not get any closer to William Clark than they did in September of 1797. Clark had been across the river trying to gather information to help out his older brother George Rogers Clark, who was in deep doo-doo for spending too much government money embarrassing the British while venturing into their territory.

Feeling the urge to party, William went to St Louis to scope out the town. There, he had a ball (literally) at Pierre Chouteau’s place with “all the fine girls and buckish Gentleman.” Now that they were drinking buddies, Clark would not forget his new friends when he came back across the river years later with Meriwether Lewis. The Spanish governor would not allow the Corps of Discovery to come ashore, but did accept a courtesy visit from Clark, who used the occasion to affirm his friendship in an aside with Auguste Chouteau. Meriwether Lewis used what influence he had to get Pierre Chouteau appointed Agent of Indian Affairs for Upper Louisiana in 1804.

The Chouteau brothers had considerable economic and political clout to go with their immense knowledge of the country and inhabitants of the Missouri and points west. It would take all of this to compete with the companies and political entities trying to control trade with the Indian nations. In turn, the Chouteau brothers made alliances with groups and individuals they deemed most capable to meet the challenges. One of these was William L. Sublette, previously a competitor. He became “their man on the ground” to deal with the most dangerous situations. Bill Sublette used shrewd strategy and good business ability, along with superior frontier skills, to stay alive and come out ahead.

After he gave up mountain man life, it would be Bill who would become owner of the ground that would one day yield the clay for our Laclede brick. Surprisingly, Bill aspired to create his own little utopia close to the city of St Louis, rather than live in Big Sky country. He chose a pleasing valley with a sulphur spring and “a river runs through it.” The “clear crystal stream” was called “River Des Peres”. This piece of property just happened to once belong to the husband of Auguste and Pierre’s sister Victoire Chouteau, Charles Gratiot, who had received it in a Spanish land grant of about 8000 acres.

In 1835, Bill had several log cabins and a large stone manor built on his 779 acre arcadia sanctuary. Sublette immediately put into play a gentleman farmer economy; exploiting natural resources of the property. Along with agricultural, livestock, and lumbering operations, mining of coal and clay was started. As it turned out, the clay was found to be the best in the country for making firebrick.

Gratiot’s son Paul had a fire brick kiln as early as 1837. We do not know, however, if Bill Sublette himself did anything but mine the clay. Soon, Bill’s arcadia had a menagerie of Wild West animals and a sulphur springs health resort for 60 boarders. Sadly, the healing waters did not restore health to Bill during an illness; so, he sought help in the East, but died in a Pittsburg, Pennsylvania hotel during his travels, on July 23, 1845.

William L. Sublette’s earthly remains were brought from Pittsburg and interred on his estate.

Soon, another utopia seeker was on the move in the person of Etienne Cabet. A French experimenter in communal living, he coined the word communisme; which became communism. Called the Icarian Movement, he lead his followers to found a colony in America; first in the Texas Red River Valley, then to the recently vacated haven of Brigham Young in Nauvoo, Illinois. Alas, Arcadia was not found there. The fragmented Icarians that still followed Cabet moved on to St Louis; but Cabet died at the end of 1856.

The remaining Icarians struggled on and in two years bought Sublette’s place, which was then on the block. Ironically, unhealthy conditions at the health resort were one reason that the colony to disbanded. Even more ironic, Bill Sublette’s mortal remains could not stay because of the demand for clay around the cemetery that contained them. Forced out at the point of a shovel, Bill’s remains were moved to Bellefontaine Cemetery in St Louis city in 1868.

Resting on 80 acres of land close by, Laclede Fire Brick Manufacturing Company was inhaling clay from the old Sublette Estate and exhaling an array of brick products. Thus, neither William Sublette nor Etienne Cabet found a final resting place in that place first called Sulphur Springs, then Cheltenham, and finally Dogtown.

However, one brick made from the clay of that place rests in the garden walk of a little arcadia created by the Callaway family in LaGrange, Georgia, where it proclaims to all that take notice: Laclede Brick is King!

Ponder, for a moment, this brick.

When I saw it in the garden walk at Hills and Dales, the Callaway family home that was built on an old plantation property in LaGrange. I guessed it to be made by a family member of a famous craftsman who once lived in LaGrange.

Hint: Expect the unexpected.

Another hint: The brick is more closely related to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, than it is to covered bridges in Georgia.

Editor’s note: SGA and GAAS member Dick Brunelle sent this to me after reading about this brick I saw in an Atlanta street. Comments are enabled so you can submit your hypothesis/guess.

Fascade of Callaway family home, Hills and Dales.

Give up? Read the answer here; it’s a fascinating story….

If you have a choice, and are driving across Georgia, try to avoid the main highways and interstates, and then look for interesting features across the landscape, including old buildings and the remains of abandoned road grades.

Recently, while driving around between Madison and Atlanta on a beautiful, sunny late fall day, we spotted this somewhat tattered wooden building on a hill next to Bostwick Road in northern Newton County, north of Covington.

A sign by the road says the Gum Creek Courthouse was built about 1888.

Even though buildings in North America aren’t very old compared to some you can find in Europe and Asia, this building is over a century old, which is longer than most of us can expect to live.

SGA members met for the Fall 2008 Meeting in Rome, in northwest Georgia on 18 October. During the morning and the first part of the afternoon, attendees heard presentations on various topics in a meeting room at the Civic Center downtown. SGA member Dave Davis, a part-time archaeologist at the Chieftains Museum, organized the meeting.

In the afternoon, attendees reconvened at the Chieftains Museum, which is centered at the historic Major Ridge House. Major Ridge (born ca. 1771, died 1839) was a prominent Cherokee leader, who settled at this ferry crossing on the north edge of what is now the city of Rome.

The original part of Major Ridge’s house was a hand-hewn log structure built about 1794, and Ridge bought it sometime prior to 1819. The building was expanded several times and is now the Chieftains Museum.

Long-time SGA member Patrick Garrow lead a walking tour of the Museum grounds. He told us about the twentieth-century swimming pool remains that were uncovered during excavations he lead some years ago.

Pat told us that a well near the house on the property also probably dated twentieth-century.

The Society for Georgia Archaeology’s 2007 lesson plan focused on Fort Hawkins. As the lesson plan notes:

Fort Hawkins is located near the Ocmulgee River and served as an important center for the frontier of Georgia from 1806-1819. It was named after Benjamin Hawkins, a white man appointed by President Washington to be an Indian Agent. Hawkins determined the fort’s location and served the nation as a liaison between the U.S. government and the Creek Nation. Hawkins was given the title Principal Temporary Agent for Indian Affairs South of the Ohio River. His 21-year career was spent monitoring and working to maintain peace. Tensions between the Creeks and the settlers increased, as settlers continued to arrive illegally on Indian land. Frustrations soon boiled over to the event known as the Red Stick War. These events ultimately led to the signing of the Treaty of Washington in which the Creek Nation was forced to cede its remaining lands in Georgia. By 1827 the Creek no longer lived in Georgia.

The lesson plan describes the Fort and provides historic details about life at the fort and the archaeological and archival (especially military records) data on the Fort. Many “further reading” titles are also listed.

Click here to download a copy of this lesson plan.

Georgia Archaeology Month 2002 focused on the prehistory of southwest Georgia, and especially the archaeology of the famous village and mound community we now call Kolomoki (pronounced ‚“Coal-oh-moe-key”), which is located in Kolomoki Mounds State Historic Park in Early County, near Blakely.

At Kolomoki, Native Americans lived, worked, played, and died. It was most heavily populated from A.D. 350-750, during what archaeologists call the Woodland Period. The Native Americans there built houses, buildings, and mounds; they hunted game and gathered plants for food. They made pottery and tools to help them in their everyday tasks. But life wasn’t all work. They played games, danced, and participated in religious ceremonies. The main settlement where Indians lived at Kolomoki is one of the oldest Indian communities in Georgia that has temple-mounds. This is one thing that makes Kolomoki unique.

The pottery of Kolomoki and contemporaneous settlements in that area have distinctive, complex designs on the exterior of the pots. The lesson plan contains discussion topics about Woodland Period pottery designs. An example of a type of pottery design archaeologists call Swift Creek is pictured here.

Click here to download a copy of this lesson plan.