If you haven’t visited bartowdig.com recently (or ever!), now’s the time to do so!

Read about the Leake Site, which is downstream of the Etowah Mounds and pre-dates it, and is on the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2010 list of Places in Peril. The website is chock-full of interesting information about this very unusual Woodland and Mississippian community….

Scot Keith—an SGA member—who is spearheading the preservation efforts that accompany the Places in Peril designation, authored a brief summary of recent research at Leake for our website.

Of course, at bartowdig.com, you’ll find all the details!

The University of Georgia Libraries have a special section called the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Among the materials available there is a rare map collection. Some of the maps have been scanned and are available in digital form online.

This is the eastern portion of a 1796 map (labeled Negative 4911; the author is Tanner). The original depicts roads or trails and rivers from the Georgia Coast westward to the Mississippi River. Indians still held the interior, but the map shows the encroachment of Euroamericans from both the Atlantic and, to some degree, the Gulf Coasts.

This item is in the Rare Map Collection online, in the group of maps called “Frontier to New South.” Click here for that listing.

What other interesting materials can you find in the online collections held by the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library?

Georgia’s Secretary of State’s website includes useful reference materials including the Georgia Archives. Current featured content on that website includes the Virtual Vault, which, the website says:

is your portal to some of Georgia’s most important historical documents, from 1733 to the present. The Virtual Vault provides virtual access to historic Georgia manuscripts, photographs, maps, and government records housed in the state archives.

The “Touring Georgia” section of the Virtual Vault includes four photographs from around Clayton, including one of this lovely and bucolic farm.

While you are likely to expect digital versions of important government records, like tax digests and death certificates, take a look and see what else you find—and let us know what surprises you or what you’re glad you’ve found—online!

The Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources has a downloadable sixteen-page booklet dated November 2007, titled Preserving Georgia’s Historic Cemeteries, that you may find interesting.

Download or review this booklet by visiting this webpage.

Or click here to access the booklet PDF directly.

This booklet compliments the book, Grave Intentions: A Comprehensive Guide to Preserving Historic Cemeteries in Georgia, by Christine Van Voorhies. This book is available in print only, and cannot be downloaded as a PDF. Grave Intentions is a small, easy-to-read guidebook with, as the HPD website notes:

…great information on cleaning up a graveyard and tombstones, getting access to gravesites, funding your project, handling threats to graves, and legal issues.

The Digital Library of Georgia website includes a page of links titled “Southeastern Native American Documents, 1730-1842″ that you may find useful. Links include the official websites of Southeastern tribes, and some museums, archives, and libraries, etc.

The Digital Library of Georgia has many useful resources for anyone interested in Georgia’s past. It has been described as a gateway to Georgia’s history and culture through digitized books, manuscripts, photographs, government documents, newspapers, maps, audio, video, and other resources.

The Digital Library of Georgia is based at the University of Georgia Libraries, and is an initiative of GALILEO, the state’s virtual library.

Click here to go to the Digital Library of Georgia main webpage.

Click here to go to the “Southeastern Native American Documents, 1730-1842″ webpage.

Click here to go to the main GALILEO webpage.

SGA President Dennis Blanton continues to blog about the laboratory studies now underway following this summer’s fieldwork into a very early historic site in south Georgia.

This was the fourth season of field work. Dennis writes:

It’s sobering every morning to peep into my lab and see the tabletops and counterspace no less clear of bags. We hauled a few hundred parcels of artifacts and special samples back from the field and they’re waiting in patient ranks for the next phase of work to begin. But I’m happy to say, after nearly a month now, that we’re poised to plunge into the job of processing and analysis.

And this is where the real work of archaeology begins. Fieldwork is a vital step; it remains the most traditional way we collect raw material for study. But all of the grubby potsherds and scraps of bone and even the glittering glass beads would maintain an uncomfortable silence if we neglected to wash them, catalog them, subject them to close examination, and then compare them with material from other excavations. This is a way of saying that, yes, the artifacts have a story to tell, one that surely will take unimagined twists and turns, but they tend to give up their secrets rather grudgingly.

Read the blog here.

You may not know that PDFs of back issues of the Society for American Archaeology’s magazine The SAA Archaeological Record are available for free, except for the latest issue. Volume 8, number 5, dated November 2008, is a topical issue, discussing the “New Archaic.” The seven articles were edited by Ken Sassaman, who also provides an excellent introduction. They examine data from different regions of North America, including two on patterns observed in the coastal Southeast.

Sassaman’s introduction, “The New Archaic, It Ain’t What It Used To Be,” discusses how the old idea that the Archaic was the time before agriculture and extended village life is now discredited. Indeed, archaeological research now shows that the Archaic period encompassed regional variation and considerable diversity. Sassaman notes:

One of the most striking discoveries of late are the monuments made of earth and shell by mobile hunter-gatherer populations as early as 7,000 years ago. Showcased in this issue are early mounds of the Southeast. This region boasts the most varied, dispersed, and ancient record of monument construction on the continent, and archaeologists are puzzling over the implications of these novel data for issues of broad anthropological relevance. [pg. 6]

He goes on:

In addition to the more ancient mounds of northeast Louisiana, the Southeast holds evidence for other types of monumental architecture that predate Poverty Point. Generally consisting of shell, the mounds, ridges, and rings of the South Atlantic and Gulf coast have survived the nineteenth-century bias of being considered natural phenomena, and the twentieth-century bias of being merely accumulated food refuse. [pg. 6–7]

In sum, if you are interested in reading brief but detailed syntheses of recent recent research on Archaic-period peoples, you might enjoy reading this issue, downloadable here.

Archaeologists working twenty or fifty years ago were serious and innovative researchers, however their understanding of the Archaic period differed considerably from the picture presented by the articles in this magazine. Is this difference due only to the substantial data that has been assembled in the interim? What other variables are there?

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.

Want to learn about the decorations on prehistoric pottery from Georgia? Try the University of Georgia’s website “Georgia Indian Pottery Site.” The current version was developed this year, and improves on the previous version, which was begun in 2005. Originally, it was essentially a digital version of the SGA’s Early Georgia from 1999, volume 27, issue 1, which is currently out of print.

You can look up pottery types by general decorative style (e.g., punctated, check stamped), or by specific name (e.g., Kasita red filmed, Deptford cord marked).

This handy and informative website is worth taking time to explore.

The National Park Service, which is administered by the Department of the Interior, has gathered together an online listing of Federal laws pertaining to archaeology. As they note:

The laws and regulations that govern the preservation of the nation’s cultural heritage developed over the course of the 20th century, beginning with the protection of cultural sites on federal lands. Today, many aspects of the nation’s cultural heritage are recognized, protected, and interpreted in national parks, other public lands, and in communities. Many of these laws are broadly applicable—the Antiquities Act and the National Historic Preservation Act—while others are specific to particular lands or resource types.

Perhaps most historically important of these laws is the Antiquities Act of 1906, which has been amended once. Section 1 states:

Any person who shall appropriate, excavate, injure, or destroy any historic or prehistoric ruin or monument, or any object of antiquity, situated on lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States, without the permis- sion of the Secretary of the Department of the Government having jurisdiction over the lands on which said antiquities are situated, shall, upon conviction, be fined in a sum of not more than five hundred dollars or be imprisoned for a period of not more than ninety days, or shall suffer both fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court.

Another of my personal favorites is Executive Order 11593, signed by Richard M. Nixon in 1971. Section 1 begins:

The Federal Government shall provide leadership in preserving, restoring, and maintaining the historic and cultural environment of the Nation.

I found a few of the links to be broken, but this list is a good start for anyone interested in Federal laws, policies, and programs that relate to archaeology. Click here to go to the NPS page listing.

This is just a partial list….

Bartowdig is a website about a single Native American archaeological site in northwest Georgia. Part of the site is beneath a state highway. Widening of that highway precipitated recent research to mitigate the impact on the part of the ancient community that would be destroyed by road construction. The site contains the remains of a Native American occupation that lasted from approximately 300 B.C. until A.D 650. These remains include three earthen mounds and a large circular ditch, along with an extensive “midden” that represents a dark soil mixture of decomposed organic refuse and artifacts that surrounded numerous residences. The site was excavated in advance of the widening of State Highway 61/113, with over 50,000 square feet excavated. The Leake site archaeological investigation revealed that this community was a major sociopolitical center during the prehistoric Middle Woodland period, figuring prominently in the interaction among peoples from across Southeastern and Midwestern North America.

Archaeological excavations in 2003 and 2004 required in advance of improvements to a four-way intersection investigated the Spier House, which was once a grand Antebellum plantation house surrounded by acres of farmland near Fairburn. The house was built in 1851 by Allison Spier, a successful politician and planter, and destroyed several decades ago. Researchers found that the house had become an archaeological site of three granite chimneys, a stone and brick-lined basement, a well, and the ruins of three outbuildings. The Spier House ruins contain some unusual features for a nineteenth-century house in Georgia, including: 1) a basement, 2) a stacked hearth chimney in the basement and floor above, and 3) the chimney masonry style. Constructing a residence with a basement was extremely rare in rural Georgia. In addition, most early Georgia houses did not contain a chimney with stacked hearths. Chimneys built with cut granite were not unusual, but the immense size of the slabs and exquisite craftsmanship of the Spier House chimneys is quite distinctive. This website was produced on behalf of GDOT by New South Associates of Stone Mountain, which conducted an in-depth archaeological investigation and an architectural historical study.

The New Georgia Encyclopedia is a premier on-line resource for information about Georgia’s past, although it emphasizes Georgia’s history over its prehistory. Click here to visit the New Georgia Encyclopedia website.

The University of Georgia’s Laboratory of Archaeology website provides, among other things, downloadable PDFs of the Laboratory of Archaeology Series Reports. The first publication in the series was in 1960, and the author was Arthur R. Kelly, the founder of the University of Georgia Department of Anthropology and the Laboratory of Archaeology. Publications cover important topics and sites from around the state.

The Digital Library of Georgia has many useful resources for anyone interested in Georgia’s past. It calls itself a gateway to Georgia’s history and culture through digitized books, manuscripts, photographs, government documents, newspapers, maps, audio, video, and other resources. Click here to go to the Digital Library of Georgia.

Our state has established NAHRGIS: Georgia’s Natural, Archaeological, and Historic Resources Geographic Information System. A geographic information system links data to location, and allows sophisticated spatial analyis. Thus, NAHRGIS is a Georgia-oriented GIS that also serves as an interactive registry for data on the natural, archaeological, and historic resources of Georgia. In its current, initial phase of development, NAHRGIS contains information about Georgia’s archaeological and historic resources. In the NAHRGIS system, archaeological resources means archaeological sites recorded in the Georgia Archaeological Site File. Historic resources includes buildings, structures, historic sites, landscapes, and districts included in the Historic Preservation Division’s Historic Resources Survey or listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

SGA’s own William F. Stanyard has established a website where he summarizes Georgia’s human past and offers other important information about archaeology in our state.

Georgia’s Office of the State Archaeologist is within the Historic Preservation Division of the Department of Natural Resources. Read more about it here.

The Georgia Archaeological Site File is the official repository for information about Georgia’s archaeological sites, dating to all periods and including standing historic buildings. The GASF houses over 3,400 Cultural Resource Management (CRM) reports from investigations in Georgia and over 700 manuscripts from archaeological research connected with the University of Georgia. Click here to go to the GASF website.

Professional archaeologists who work in Georgia often seek to join the Georgia Council of Professional Archaeologists. Information about the GCPA can be found here. The Council website also has helpful information about Georgia’s laws pertaining to human remains and Standards and Guidelines for Archaeological Surveys.

The Coosawattee Foundation, based in Calhoun, seeks to educate the public about the value of past and present Native American cultures, to work with landowners to preserve archaeological sites and the natural environments in the immediate vicinity of these sites, and to persuade the public and government leaders of the need to implement public policy mechanisms to protect these resources. Read more about the Coosawattee Foundation here.

The LAMAR Institute is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization; its mission is to conduct archaeological and historical research in southeastern North American and to advance public archaeological education. Read more about the LAMAR Institute here.

Although their information is more general, several national organizations have online presences and websites that are worth viewing.

The Archaeological Conservancy is a non-profit organization that seeks to acquire and preserve the best of our nation’s remaining archaeological sites. Every day archaeological sites are threatened by development and other land use changes. The Archaeological Conservancy publishes a fine quarterly popular magazine that you receive as part of your membership. Click here to go to the website of the Archaeological Conservancy.

The Archaeological Institute of America is a nationwide organization that seeks to promote public interest in all facets of archaeology, to support research and preservation, and represents the discipline across the globe. The AIA was founded in 1879 and chartered by the United States Congress in 1906. With membership in the AIA you receive six issues each year of their informative magazine, Archaeology, which reports on archaeological research and discoveries from around the world. Click here to read more about the AIA on their website.

The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) Archaeology Unit at the Office of Environment/Location is an integral part of the GDOT mission statement that promises a “safe, seamless and sustainable transportation system that supports Georgia’s economy and is sensitive to its citizens and environment.” The responsibilities of the GDOT Archaeology Unit within the mission are two-fold. The GDOT Archaeology Unit primarily performs environmental regulatory functions that facilitate the approval of proposed road projects from Preconstruction through Construction, ensuring that GDOT is in compliance with numerous local, state, and federal historic preservation laws and ordinances, as they relate to proposed transportation projects.

Secondly, the GDOT Archaeology Unit, as cultural resource managers and stewards of the state’s cultural environment, looks outside the regulatory box and incorporates its responsibility to Georgia’s “citizens and environment” in every facet of the job. The GDOT Archaeology Unit provides the public with educational opportunities that promote cultural awareness and respect for Georgia’s shared cultural heritage. GDOT Archaeologists are architects of progressive Public Education/Outreach initiatives that reach Georgians of all ages and interests. Through partnership with the Georgia Department of Education (GDOE), GDOT archaeologists have created educational products and programs that effectively engage children in archaeology and Georgia’s prehistory.

The GDOT Archaeology Unit is proud to share the information it gathers through its work with residents of the State of Georgia and with the professional archaeological community. GDOT Archaeology produces reports about their investigations, publishes research volumes, offers informational brochures and posters, develops traveling exhibits, and provides teaching trunks/tools and curriculum/activity guides to classrooms and the public. These resources are outlined below and are available by request. If you are interested in any of these resources, please contact the Archaeology Unit supervisor, Eric Duff, at the Office of Environment/Location [telephone 404- 699-4406, or at email eduff@dot.ga.gov]. We’ve already done so many great things through wonderful partnerships with, the Federal Highway Administration, the Department of Education, the National Park Service, Georgia State Parks and Historic Sites, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the Georgia Department of Economic Development, the Georgia Technology Authority, our tribal partners, our consultants, and many others; and we’re always looking for new ideas! The Archaeology Unit strives to proactively engage the public in its work and works to promote cultural awareness, cultural heritage education, and respect for Native American culture and historic resources.

Teaching trunks provide a hands-on archaeological experience within a classroom setting and provide appropriate lesson plans defined to satisfy criteria for the Georgia Performance Standards. These trunks are loaned by the Unit to schools and systems across the state for established periods of time. Please contact the Archaeology Unit supervisor to request a trunk. GDOT Archaeologists are available for speaking engagements at Metro Atlanta schools. Please contact Archaeologist Sara Gale, at 404-699-6880, or at sgale@dot.ga.gov to schedule a visit. Classrooms can visit GDOT archaeological excavations by scheduling a visit with the GDOT Project Archaeologist in charge of operations at each site. Mitigations of archaeological sites occur in all areas of the state and can provide an interactive experience for students looking to “get their hands dirty.” Please contact the Archaeology Unit supervisor to discuss options. Release forms must be signed in advance of the visit.

The Archaeology Unit has the following brochures and/or rack cards (hard copies or digital copies of these can be requested), reading and visual material sources: The Bridges at Piscola Creek, Brooks County, Georgia (brochure); Archaeology of Tenant Farming on the Upper Coastal Plain of Georgia: The Free Cabin Site (brochure); Battery Hamilton (brochure and informational kiosks on location), information also online here; Camp Lawton, Magnolia Springs State Park, Millen, Georgia (brochure); New Echota, A Cherokee Traditional Cultural Property (brochure); Explore Georgia’s Old Federal Road (driving tour brochure and rack card); The History and Archaeology of a Civil War Soldier, by William R. Bowen, Staff Archaeologist, Georgia DOT (booklet). The Archaeology Unit also produces research reports called “Occasional Papers in Cultural Resource Management.” This series currently includes 11 volumes, one recently published in conjunction with the Society for Georgia Archaeology in the form of the journal, Early Georgia. These research reports are mostly available in paper and/ or digital format (Adobe PDF) and can be requested from the Archaeology Unit supervisor. Many more of these volumes are currently being developed, so check back often if you are interested in reading about the most up-to-date research that is involved with major excavations by the Department.

The Archaeology Unit is associated with a website that contains the New Echota video, which can be viewed and downloaded. This video is titled A Traditional Cultural Property Study of New Echota, the First Cherokee National Capitol from 1825-1838, Gordon County, Georgia. The video is also available on VHS or CD from the Department. The website is here. A CD Presentation (Powerpoint) about the excavations at the Free Cabin Archaeological Site is also available from the Archaeology Unit. [Information on this resource can also be found online here.] The Old Federal Road Driving Tour package is available for download from the Georgia Department of Economic Development’s web page, which is at http://www.georgia.org/podcast. Finally, the series Georgia Outdoors on your local Georgia Public Television channel has featured “Archaeology” shorts and previous GDOT excavations. These episodes are re-run often, and there are more planned for future seasons. The recent episode entitled “Held in Trust” featured GDOT’s work with the GaDNR at Magnolia Springs State Park in Millen, Georgia. Additionally, the Archaeology Unit is associated with the following websites that exist today:

Spier House

Bartow Archaeology (Leake Site)

Hardin Bridge Site, Bartow County

Jimmy Carter National Historic Site Educational Program

The Archaeology Unit has already developed two traveling exhibits (housed in small display cases) about archaeology in Georgia. One of these rotates around GDOT’s district offices, and one is housed at a summer camp facility, Camp Twin Lakes, in Rutledge, Georgia. Finally, we have recently distributed an educational poster to middle schools and museums in the Northwest Georgia area; this poster, entitled “Before the Cherokee: Prehistoric Indians of Northwest Georgia,” educates children about prehistoric cultures and the basics of archaeology. In the future, keep open to the local media (newspapers/radio/ TV), as there are often features discussing GDOT archaeological excavations in your area. The Department also has many other educational products in development at this time, including websites, video games, and informational signage stations, and we hope to soon share those with the archaeological community and the public.