SGA leadership touring Sapelo Lighthouse.

When the SGA leadership visited the coast in February 2010, many of us also toured Sapelo Island with archaeologist Dr. Ray Crook, who has worked on the island for decades. We took the morning ferry out underovercast skies, watched the sun arrive with us at the island dock, and returned to the mainland late in the afternoon. We took a break to enjoy a Geechee lunch at mid-day.

We met at the Sapelo Island Visitor Center, which is next to the ferry dock north of Darien. The Center has some informational displays, a telescope we used to spot the incoming ferry to time our exit into the chilly wind to wait for the ferry’s arrival, and books and souvenirs for sale.

We were very lucky to take the “new” ferry, a 70-foot long catamaran named the Katie Underwood. Ms. Underwood was the last midwife on the island, who delivered babies there through 1968. The Katie Underwood began ferry service in 2006.

On the island, our first stop was Long Tabby, which is also where the Sapelo Island Post Office is, along with DNR offices, and the tabby ruins of Thomas Spalding’s sugar mill, built by 1809. Spalding also owned Ashantilly, the plantation on the mainland where we convened our SGA meeting the day before. The sugar mill had a warehouse-dock combination right next door, for shipping the sugar. The dock is gone except for some pilings, and the warehouse is mostly gone above ground. Ray also told us the plantation architecture is atop a prehistoric occupation. In fact, this is true for many plantation buildings on Georgia’s barrier islands. A good spot is a good spot to anyone, we figured, whether you were staying for a few months to gather food from the estuaries in 1000 BC or build a tabby sugar mill in the early AD 1800s.

The lighthouse at the south end of the island has deep red and brilliant white stripes; it is one of five remaining lighthouses on Georgia’s barrier islands. The lighthouses were built to make commercial shipping safer. US lighthouses are all painted with distinct, unduplicated patterns so mariners never will confuse them. The building contract for the first lighthouse at the south end of Sapelo was let in 1819. This lighthouse was inactivated after damage by a hurricane in 1898; it was restored and reopened in 1998. The most difficult part of the restoration was reconstruction of the interior curving staircase; each step had to be made and installed before construction of the next one up could begin. Apparently, the 1820 facility grew to include a keeper’s house, cistern, and oil house. Also near the lighthouse is the foundation of an 1898 gun emplacement.

We made a brief stop at the Reynolds Mansion to take photographs. The mansion is owned by the state, and you can rent a room there. According to the Mansion website:

The original Mansion was designed and built from tabby, a mixture of lime, shells and water, by Thomas Spalding, an architect, statesman and plantation owner who purchased the south end of the island in 1802. The Mansion served as the Spalding Plantation Manor from 1810 until the Civil War. It fell into ruin after being damaged by Union attack during the Civil War and was later purchased and rebuilt by Detroit automotive engineer Howard Coffin in 1912. Tobacco heir Richard Reynolds purchased the property in 1934, donating land and facilities to the University of Georgia for marine research. Following Reynolds’ death in 1964 the Mansion and most of the island was obtained by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources in 1975. Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve and University of Georgia Marine Research Facilities are still located on the island.

The wing of the Mansion in the pictures encloses a swimming pool. Facing this wing, a sharp-eyed archaeologist spotted an orange tree from the lovely gardens that once surrounded the Mansion. Only remnants of it remain. Archaeologists learn to spot “foreign” vegetation that indicates deliberate planting or horticulture by prior human inhabitants.

Next Ray took us to Behavior Cemetery. Once a slave community with dispersed homes rather than a centralize layout, Behavior is now abandoned and most of the structures are now below-ground archaeological features. The Behavior cemetery is still in use. In fact, a funeral was held the day before we arrived. According to the National Park Service website:

Behavior Cemetery is a unique post-Civil War African American burial ground located in the center, south end of Sapelo Island. It is one-and-one-fourth miles west of Hog Hammock, the sole surviving African American community on the island. The cemetery reflects African American burial customs. Early grave markers include short posts at either end of the graves and epitaphs on wooden boards nailed to the surrounding trees, while more recent tombstones are made of local cement, with some granite and metal funeral home markers.

Ray also taught us the proper way to enter a Geechee cemetery. Geechee refers to the descendents of slaves still living on Sapelo (and in other coastal areas), and maintaining some of their African linguistic and cultural heritage. Geechee peoples believe that spirits occupy the grave yard, and to enter one must first ask the spirits’ permission. Geechee people chose not to live near a cemetery, to keep a safe distance from the spirits.

As Ray has noted (“Gullah-Geechee Archaeology: The Living Space of Enslaved Geechee on Sapelo Island,” in the March 2008 Newsletter of the African Diaspora Archaeology Network:

Geechee people have lived on Sapelo Island for about 250 years. Their exceptionally strong sense of place is permanently connected to the island where they “catch sense” in their youth and are buried when they die. Here they tilled the fields and harvested gardens, fished the tidal creeks, hunted game and gathered plants along the marsh edges and in the forests, and engaged in a variety of work activities. [page 2]

After a Geechee lunch, this one characterized by yellow and orange foods (including canned corn, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, yellow poundcake), we drove north up the west/inland side of the island, wallowing through deep mudholes that had been filled by rains over the previous two days. We stopped at Kenan, a prehistoric archaeological site that Ray told us is the largest mapped archaeological site east of the Mississippi River. The site is civic-ceremonial and residential. Most people lived in homes scattered across a huge area.

Many ruins of the Chocolate plantation are still standing, but only two still have a roof, and therefore any protection from the elements. One is a Sears Roebuck Catalogue Home. The other This presents a difficult historic preservation situation, especially if funds are few or non-existent, as with this state-owned site. As Ray Crook noted in the 2008 newsletter article cited above,

During the late 1790s, the Chocolate tract was farmed by Lewis Harrington with the labor of 68 slaves. In 1802 that property became jointly owned by Edward Swarbreck and Thomas Spalding, who leased out at least a portion of the tract until 1808. Swarbreck, a Danish sea merchant with Caribbean connections who traded in cotton and other commodities, including slaves, then directed his attention to Chocolate. His plantation layout followed a familiar and very formal design…. The Big House, built of tabby, overlooked the Mud River and expansive salt marshes. His residence was flanked by outbuildings and other support structures. Two parallel rows of slave quarters, spaced some 10m apart and separated by a broad open area 50m across, were constructed behind the Big House. Vast agricultural fields extended to the north and south. Evidence of at least nine slave quarters, typically tabby duplexes with central chimneys and finished tabby floors, each side measuring about 4.3m by 6.1m, survives today as ruins and archaeological features at Chocolate. These represent an enslaved population of some 70 to 100 people distributed among at least 18 households…. [page 3]

Deteriorating, roofless structure at Chocolate Plantation.

Archaeological research at Chocolate is detailed in a 2007 report by Nicholas Honerkamp, Ray Crook, and Orion Kroulek titled “Pieces of Chocolate: Site Structure and Function at Chocolate Plantation (9MC96), Sapelo Island, Georgia” and downloadable here. They write that:

Besides presumably raising cotton, there is direct evidence that Swarbreck (or at least his slaves) grew sugar cane and had it processed into molasses and sugar at Thomas Spalding’s sugar mill located on the southern end of Sapelo. In a 12 January 1815 letter to Charles Harris, reproduced here in Appendix A, Swarbreck discusses the virtues of Thomas Spalding’s sugar mill, and the considerable value ($17,600) of the quantity of sugar and molasses that Swarbreck saw in Spalding’s “Curing House.” Swarbreck also mentions that he was sending an example of his own finished product: “Agreeable to your wish, I Present you with a small sample of sugar & molassis that I brought from sapelo Island, manufactur’d by Mr. Spalding from my own Sugar cane which place I left the 7th Inst.”

Tabby construction at Chocolate during Swarbreck’s tenure was an enormous undertaking, unparalleled at any other place on Sapelo Island. Preparation of the tabby mixture – consisting of equal parts of shell, lime from burned shell, and sand – involved collecting salt-free oyster shell from shell midden deposits found at nearby Native American archaeological sites (such as at the Shell Ring and at Long Row Field), transporting it to the construction site, burning a portion of the shell for lime, and preparing the mixture with sand and water to be poured into wall forms to cure. Roughly 1050 cubic meters (~37,000 cubic feet) of shell was brought into Chocolate to construct Swarbreck’s tabby buildings. This volume equals the oyster shell that would be represented in about 350 Native American shell middens, each measuring 3 meters in diameter and 50 centimeters in height. [pages 7-8]

From Chocolate Plantation, we continued farther north to the Sapelo Island Shell Rings, which, for many of us, was the high point of our adventure. This feature is just what it sounds like—a ring of shell deposits. Actually, there are three rings near each other on this part of Sapelo, but we only visited the largest, which is huge at over 100 yards across and more than 9 feet high (larger shell rings are known, though, just not on Sapelo). In the 1950s, archaeologists Antonio Waring and Lewis Larson dug a trench through this shell ring, which reveals that the deposits show layering, with some layers of mostly shell, and other layers with more dark, humic materials mixed with the shell. Probably, because they were mined for their shell to make tabby and road fill, there were more shell rings along the coast than can be found today. Shell rings date (mostly) to the Late Archaic, over five thousand years ago. Evidence suggests people lived atop the ring and discarded the shell between their houses. Most of the shell is oyster, but many other shellfish species are included, including the bones of terrestrial and other marine creatures.

What a great day we had touring Sapelo! Most of us were rather tired as we took the ferry back to the mainland en route to returning to every-day life, but we were also sad to end our adventure on one of Georgia’s barrier islands.

Thank you

Many people made this trip possible, and are owed a big debt of thanks. Thanks!

SGA Board Member Kevin Kiernan did the organizing of the whole weekend. DNR manager Fred Hay organized vehicles and helped with all aspects of our on-island time. Members of the Geechee community opened the cemetery to us and cooked our lunch and brought it to us. And, Ray Crook gave us the benefit of his decades of research, not only on Sapelo, but also along the coast.

 

Online reading on Georgia’s barrier islands

Dr. Crook’s webpage, with downloadable copies of his reports and articles, published since the 1980s.

Dr. Crook’s article on Jekyll Island, on thesga.org website.

Ginessa Mahar’s article on Late Archaic shell rings on St. Catherines Island on this website.

Some University of Georgia Laboratory of Archaeology Laboratory of Archaeology Series Reports detail coastal research.

On Sapelo Island’s past, by the Georgia DNR and by Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve.

On Sapelo, including Chocolate Plantation.

On tabby, a mix of sand, shell, lime, and water that hardens somewhat like cement.

Archaeologist Jerald Ledbetter records stratigraphic information to provide context for the looted artifacts and bone.

Burke County State Court Judge Jerry Daniel in January 2010 handed down heavy fines on four east Georgia men who pled guilty to multiple counts related to looting a Late Archaic, Stallings culture shell midden site on the Ogeechee River in southern Burke County, Georgia. The four men were apprehended on private land by Georgia Department of Natural Resources Ranger First Class Jeff Billips and Ranger First Class Grant Matherly in late September of 2009. Two were found on the site with digging tools and fled when approached by the rangers. They were caught and charged with criminal trespass and interfering with the duties of an officer. They initially pled not guilty.

The other two men were arrested the next day when they were observed in the act of digging on the site. They had a number of artifacts in their possession, including a bone tool, several spear points and a shell gorget. One of the latter two men was digging through a human burial when caught. They were charged with criminal trespass, digging on an archeological site without permission and littering, and pled guilty to all counts.

In statements made during the sentencing, Judge Daniel said he knew that important archeological sites in Burke County were being badly harmed by site looters and that he wanted to put a stop to this long-standing activity. He also emphasized that the looters were trespassing on private property, and stealing private property, since archaeological sites (with the exception of burials and associated artifacts) under law belong to the landowner. In an attempt to put an end to destructive site looting the judge levied heavy fines and penalties, which included a $1000 fine for each count, a minimum $7384.00 fine to repair the archeological and physical damage to the site, 12 weekends in jail, community service, three years of probation (which requires a surcharge payment of $52/month) and a ban on attending any type of artifact show. After hearing about this heavy sentence, the first two men then pled guilty to avoid potential harsher sentencing in a trial. The three men who live outside of Burke County (one is from Swainsboro and two are from Metter) were banned from Burke County for three years.

All four men have been digging on sites for many years and one acknowledged that he has dug on many sites on the Ogeechee River acknowledged selling artifacts.

Testifying at the sentencing were State Archaeologist Dr. David Crass and Georgia Council on American Indian Concerns (GCAIC) archaeologist Tom Gresham. Crass requested GCAIC involvement in the case, and Gresham was called to the site in early October to document the site and the extent of the looting. He saw numerous piles of Stallings/Thoms Creek pottery, animal bone and chert artifacts left by the looters, as well as spoil piles containing abundant fresh water shell. After the DNR officers gathered the evidence they needed, Gresham and three colleagues mapped the extent of the looting, calculating that about 290 square meters had been disturbed. They also gathered about 47 pounds of bone, 56 pounds of stone artifacts and 82 pounds of pottery. This material is now being analyzed by Jerald Ledbetter and Lisa O’Steen so that some scientific value can be salvaged from the site. The site dates to the Stallings and Thoms Creek cultures of the Late Archaic period, which spans a critical time in Georgia prehistory, from about 3500 to 4000 years ago. This was a time when Indians in the Southeast were becoming more sedentary and began heavily exploiting freshwater shell fish.

Dr. Crass told Judge Daniel that Burke County contains some of the most important Archaic Period sites in Georgia, and that DNR believes an educated and caring private landowner is often the best protection for such sites. He also pointed out that there is an important distinction to be made between wholesale digging and casual surface collecting, and that DNR (and Georgia code) recognizes this distinction.

The Georgia Council on American Indian Concerns actively supported the efforts of DNR’s Law Enforcement Division to prosecute the case and rectify the damage to the site and to the human burials. Although the Council was disappointed that felony charges of burial disturbance were not brought, it was explained that misdemeanor convictions and appropriate penalties in State Court were a better bet than the uncertain outcome of a felony charge in Superior Court.

Tom Gresham notes that these sentences were largely a result of several actions taken by the archeological community in the past two decades. The principal charge was excavating on a site without written permission of the landowner and without notifying DNR. This law was proposed by archeologists in 1993 to allow prosecution without requiring the landowner to press charges. Additionally, the DNR rangers had been trained and sensitized to the problem of site looting and were very effective in gathering evidence and presenting a strong case. Dr. Crass lauded the two rangers and their colleagues, Sergeant Max Boswell and Captain Thomas Barnard, saying that they handled the case with high professionalism.

Third, it is likely that a long running campaign by archaeologists to inform the public about the harm that site looting does to all Georgians created the atmosphere for harsher sentencing.

Society for Georgia Archaeology President Dennis Blanton observes that

the outcome of this case sends all of the right signals: Georgia’s irreplaceable archaeological sites are under siege and require vigilant protection, there is a broad spectrum of our citizens out there that cares deeply about them, and such sites have a critical story to tell about our human forbears. We can only hope that looters will take note and that others will be alert to illegal digging elsewhere in the state.

Tom Gresham remarked that he had never seen such a wide array of punctated and stab-and-drag motifs on the pottery. One sherd alone has five types of punctation. As noted a decade ago by Ken Sassaman, Stallings-like pottery on the Ogeechee River is mostly sand tempered, with very little fiber. Thus, it is more accurately typed as Thoms Creek pottery. Of the approximately 700 sherds collected from the spoil piles, every one is Thoms Creek/Stallings pottery. The animal bone contains a great deal of deer and turtle bone, and only small amounts of bird and other mammal bone. No fish bone has yet been identified. As mentioned, human bone, probably from two individuals, has also been identified.

Illegal digging on shell middens along the Ogeechee River is a long-standing problem, presumably fed by the antiquities market that highly values bone pins often found in shell middens. Ken Sassaman, Kristin Wilson and Frankie Snow wrote an article in the Spring 1995 issue of Early Georgia citing this problem and documenting two looted sites on the Ogeechee River not far from the recently looted site. It is anticipated that the analysis of the pottery, stone and bone from the present site will be described in an article in Early Georgia.

 

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:

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?

Many of the archeological phase names currently used for northwest Georgia are directly attributable to the work of Joseph Caldwell in Allatoona Reservoir more than fifty years ago (Caldwell 1950, 1957). While terminology has changed over the years, most of the designations used by Caldwell remain in use today. For instance, the old term “Kellogg focus” is now referred to as Kellogg phase and “Cartersville focus” is now referred to as Cartersville phase (Garrow 2002:2). This change to modern terminology has been gradual and there have been relatively recent cases where an author considered it “advisable to retain the older terminological structure to avoid potential confusion” (Cable et al. 1991:80).

It is a little known fact that Caldwell also defined a Late Archaic phase for the Allatoona Reservoir that he called the Stamp Creek focus (Caldwell 1957:279). Based on his description, the Stamp Creek focus would be comparable in many respects to the Late Archaic Mill Branch or Black Shoals phases of eastern Georgia (Elliott et al. 1994:371, Stanyard 2003:62). The most diagnostic artifact type associated with each of these is represented by large stemmed projectile points that may be identified as Savannah River Stemmed (Coe 1959:44) or Appalachian Stemmed (Kneberg 1957). While these two point names appear to be regional variants of the same type, the name Appalachian Stemmed tends to be used for points made from quartzite (Cambron and Hulse 1964:6).

Caldwell devoted substantial space in his Allatoona report to the discussion of the Stamp Creek focus, but it would seem that he did not pursue the subject further after that project. A search of the University of Georgia’s Laboratory of Archaeology Manuscript Files produced a single document on the subject. A manuscript entitled “The Stamp Creek Culture: A Prepottery Occupation in the Etowah Area, Georgia” is not dated, but a notation in the text indicates it was written prior to 1955. In reading Trend and Tradition in the Prehistory of the Eastern United States, the Stamp Creek type site is mentioned, but the Stamp Creek focus is not discussed (Caldwell 1958:80). Because the Allatoona Survey report was never published, relatively few archeologists have been made aware of Caldwell’s Late Archaic phase description.

Caldwell’s Stamp Creek focus was intended to represent the final stage of the Archaic period, but his trait list probably includes some artifacts from earlier and later periods. Artifact drawings include large stemmed projectile points, a variety of smaller stemmed points, notched points and soapstone sherds. Figure 1 shows one of Caldwell’s illustrations of projectile points thought to be part of the Stamp Creek focus (the figure also depicts triangular points of the later Kellogg focus). Using the data available at the time, Caldwell felt the Stamp Creek focus assemblage differed in some respects from the closely related Savannah River focus of eastern Georgia (Fairbanks 1942:223-231) and the Lauderdale focus of northern Alabama (Webb and DeJarnette 1942:19).

With respect to the traits used to define the Stamp Creek focus, Caldwell noted that of the various stemmed points found on the sites, the medium to large ‚“simple tang” (stemmed) points were the most characteristic and also showed the closest resemblance to materials from other Southeastern pre-ceramic foci (Caldwell 1957:279, 1958:13). Such points are usually relatively large and heavy, the stem is square, and the shoulders broad and well defined (Caldwell 1957: Figures 8 and 9). Caldwell also included hemispherical steatite bowls and other groundstone artifacts as traits of the focus. Caldwell recognized that perforated steatite tablets, “the so-called net sinkers,” that are so numerous at Stallings Island and other Savannah River Focus sites, were practically absent in the Allatoona area. The excavated Stamp Creek focus sites produced no axes, atlatl weights, bone or shell artifacts (Caldwell 1957:280).

Caldwell noted that at Allatoona, quartzite was usually employed for large simple tang points, but quartz was little used. Flint (chert) was used to produce smaller points that were highly variable in shape and included slight (expanded) tang, simple (straight) tang, bifurcated tang, corner notched, side notched and stemless (Caldwell 1957:9). As previously noted, some of the points would be recognized today as dating to earlier or later time periods.

Figure 1. Examples of projectile points and bifaces associated with Caldwell’s Stamp Creek focus with comparisons to those of the Kellogg focus. The large quartzite points in the center are typical examples (illustration courtesy of the University of Georgia, Laboratory of Archaeology). Click image for much larger version of the figure.

Caldwell’s excavations on the Stamp Creek site produced a number of features and he concluded that 18 pits could be attributed to the Stamp Creek focus occupation. Most appeared to be used for storage of food, but one contained red ochre and some traces of human bone. Most of the pits were similar in appearance, usually with straight sides and flat bottoms. Dimensions ranged from 2.5 to 5 feet in diameter and 1.5 to 3 feet deep. A few were oval or oblong and in two or three instances, sides were sloping. Based on our current understanding of diagnostic artifact types, some of the features identified by Caldwell are probably associated with later occupations (terminal Late Archaic or Woodland). Still, the evidence remains that 9BR139 was an intensively occupied habitation site of the period.

Caldwell regarded the Stamp Creek Focus as a relatively late pre-ceramic culture but he cautioned that the absence of fiber tempered pottery on these sites did not mean that the ceramic type was not being used in the region (Caldwell 1957:280). Caldwell’s report actually illustrates one fiber tempered sherd from the Stamp Creek site and he describes one additional fiber tempered sherd form another survey site, 9CK101, as “Stallings Island Incised and Punctate” (Caldwell 1957:207). At present, we have no means of determining if the fiber tempered sherds were associated with the Stamp Creek focus or a later occupation.

Subsequent to Caldwell’s work in Allatoona Reservoir, other sites have been identified in northwestern Georgia that contain large Savannah River Stemmed or Appalachian Stemmed types that are made quartzite or other equally hard lithic materials (Beasley 1995, Benson et al. 2007, Crook 1984, Webb 1998). The identified site types include intensively occupied habitation sites, short term camps, and quarry-oriented lithic workshops. One recently investigated site, 9GO231, is of particular interest because Savannah River style projectile points made from quartzite and Ridge and Valley chert occur in nearly equal numbers (Benson et al. 2007). 9GO231 is located within the Ridge and Valley Province, while most of the other sites discovered to date lie at the edge of the Piedmont Province. A few radiocarbon dates have been procured in the past decade from northwest Georgia sites that are in line with those of the Mill Branch and Black Shoals phases of eastern Georgia and western South Carolina (Webb 1998, Steve Webb, personal communication 2007). The suggested range of Mill Branch and Black Shoals phases extends from approximately 4200 to 3450 B.P. (Stanyard 2003:62). It would appear that Caldwell’s Stamp Creek focus should fit comfortably within that time period.

During the 1970s, archeologists began using the term Savannah River phase to cover the entire pre-ceramic Late Archaic period in the northern part of Georgia (DePratter 1975:4) and that phase designation has been used in a few northwestern Georgia reports (Bowen 1989:115, Crook 1984:55). In his recent overview of the Archaic period of northwestern Georgia, Stanyard (2003:58) concluded that a general lack of information impedes our ability to assess the nature of the Late Archaic development in the region and he proposed a provisional category of “undifferentiated phase” for the period of ca 5000 to 3000 B.P. (Stanyard 2003:58). I suggest that Caldwell’s Stamp Creek focus represents a useful tool for the study of a portion of the Late Archaic period. Unfortunately, we cannot simply change the word “focus” to “phase” and was the case for Kellogg and Cartersville. The name Stamp Creek phase was adopted several years ago as a Lamar designation (Hally and Rudolph 1986:64). While Caldwell’s Late Archaic designation has historical precedence, it is unlikely that the Lamar phase name will ever be changed. For the time being, it is perhaps just as well that we continue to use the name “Caldwell’s Stamp Creek focus” in our discussions of the Late Archaic for northwest Georgia.

References Cited

Beasley, Robert K.
1995 Artifacts from the Basin of Pumpkinvine Creek, Georgia. Central States Archaeological Journal 42(3):146-147.

Benson Robert W., Scott Jones, and Andrew Ivester
2007 Phase III Excavations of 9GO231 on Lick and Salacoa Creeks, Gordon County, Georgia. Draft report submitted to the Georgia Department of Transportation by Southeastern Archeological Services, Inc., Athens.

Bowen, William Rowe
1989 An Examination of Subsistence, Settlement, and Chronology During the Early Woodland Kellogg Phase in the Piedmont Physiographic Province of the Eastern United States. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Cable, John S., Leslie E. Raymer, J.H. Raymer, and Charles E. Cantley
1991 Archaeological Test Excavations at The Lake Ackworth Site (9CO45) and the Butler Creek Site (9CO46) Allatoona Lake, Cobb County, Georgia. Report submitted to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Mobile District by New South Associates, Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Caldwell, Joseph R.
1950 A Preliminary Report on Excavations in the Allatoona Reservoir. Early Georgia 1(1):5-21.
1957 Survey and Excavations in the Allatoona Reservoir, Northern Georgia. University of Georgia Laboratory of Archaeology Manuscript No. 151, Athens.
1958 Trend and Tradition in the Prehistory of the Eastern United States. Memoir No. 88, American Anthropological Association and the Illinois State Museum Scientific Papers, vol. X, Springfield Illinois.

Cambron, James W. and David C. Hulse
1964 Handbook of Alabama Archaeology: Part 1, Point Types. Alabama Archaeological Society, Huntsville.

Coe, Joffre
1964 The Formative Cultures of the Carolina Piedmont. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 54(5), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Crook, Morgan R., Jr.
1984 Cagle Site Report, Archaic and Early Woodland Period Manifestations in the North Georgia Piedmont. West Georgia College Occasional Papers in Cultural Resource Management, no. 2. Prepared for Georgia Department of Transportation, Atlanta.

DePratter, Chester B.
1975 The Archaic in Georgia. Early Georgia 3(1):1-16.

Elliott, Daniel T., Jerald Ledbetter and Elizabeth Gordon
1994 Data Recovery at Lovers Lane, Phinizy Swamp and the Old Dike Sites Bobby Jones Expressway Extension Corridor, Augusta, Georgia. Occasional Papers in Cultural Resource Management, no. 7. Georgia Department of Transportation, Atlanta.

Fairbanks, Charles H.
1942 The Taxonomic Position of Stallings Island, Georgia. American Antiquity 7(3):223-231.

Garrow, Patrick H.
2002 The Woodland North of the Fall Line. Paper presented Southeastern Archeological Conference, Macon, Georgia.

Hally, David J. and Teresa Rudolph
1986 Mississippian Period Archaeology of the Georgia Piedmont. Laboratory of Archaeology Series Report, no. 2. University of Georgia, Athens.

Kneberg, Madeline
1957 Chipped Stone Artifacts of the Tennessee Valley Area. Tennessee Archaeologist XIII(1). Tennessee Archaeological Society, Knoxville.

Stanyard, William F.
2003 Archaic Period Archaeology of Northern Georgia. Georgia Archaeological Research Design Paper, no. 13. University of Georgia, Laboratory of Archaeology Report No. 38.

Webb, Robert S.
1998 Archeological Investigations at Three Prehistoric Sites (9DW64, 9DW77 and 9CK713) Cherokee and Dawson Counties, Georgia, Cherokee County Raw Water Supply Reservoir. Prepared for Cherokee County Water and Sewerage Authority, Canton, Georgia by R.S. Webb and Associates, Holly Springs, Georgia.

Webb, William S. And David L. DeJarnette
1942 An Archaeological Survey of the Pickwick Basin in Adjacent Portions of the States of Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin, no. 129, Washington.

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) has been lucky enough to work on St. Catherines Island, Georgia for the last 30+ years. Since 2006, the museum has focused its attention on the Late Archaic Period (3000-1000 B.C.) on the island—specifically, we have been working on the St. Catherines Island Shell Ring. Shell rings are large, some say monumental, sites that occur only in the Late Archaic Period. Because of both their size, and the apparent planned nature of the sites, the function of shell rings has been a very contested issue. Likewise, to many archaeologists, the complexity found in shell rings brings up questions of sedentism, power, control over labor, and hierarchy to a period of time that just twenty years ago was considered populated by roving bands of egalitarian hunter-gatherers.

AMNH has carried out a variety of field methods on the shell ring including detailed topographical mapping, remote sensing surveys (including magnetometry, ground penetrating radar, and resistivity), and small-scale excavations. During May 2007, the museum decided to conduct a large block excavation within the interior of the ring. Historically, the interiors of shell rings have often been ignored, or only lightly tested, as most archaeologists focused on the areas of high shell deposit, which make up the ring itself. Based on earlier remote sensing results, along with the findings from a trench excavation, the museum decided that the interior of the ring held information that was key to understanding the function and usage of the ring. To uncover this information, the museum decided to open up a relatively large block excavation (roughly 24 square meters). The plan paid off and the field crew was excited to uncover over 20 large features in the center of the ring.

Figure 1. Topographical map of St. Catherines Island Shell Ring.

These features are all very similar in shape, color, and contents. All of them are circular, have straight walls, and flat bottoms. Their dark color appears to be caused less by burning (very little charcoal was recovered) and more by organic deposits. Not only was very little charcoal found in the features, but little cultural material of any type was found. However, several of the features did have a small amount of bone and fiber-tempered pottery, but over-all most were nearly devoid of artifacts. A single feature had a significant amount of shell in it while all the rest were empty of shell save for a single piece on occasion. The main attribute that distinguished the features was how deep they went. Some of the features were shallow—only 20-30 cm—while others went very deep; several went over a meter deep. The museum has 15 C14 dates from the features and is currently analyzing the artifacts found within them. Numerous flotation samples were gathered from each feature and they will also be analyzed as soon as possible.

The Museum looks forward to returning to the island this fall and continuing our work on the Late Archaic Period. This much-studied, but poorly understood time period holds the answers about why the Native Americans of the southeast decided to construct a series of monumental shell rings throughout the coastal regions and what those rings mean to larger questions of complexity, power, and sedentism in the region. The museum is grateful for the continued patronage of the St. Catherines Island and Edward John Noble Foundations as well as the support from the staff on the island, especially Royce Hayes. None of this work would be possible without their backing.

Meta-slate axe from the Hardin Bridge site.

Research of the Hardin Bridge Site (9BR34) in Bartow County site is ongoing at New South Associates. Laboratory analysis has shown that the Hardin Bridge site represents a Late Archaic through early Middle Woodland timeframe based on lithic and pottery specimens. To date, the majority of hafted bifaces are consistent with the Late Archaic Ledbetter cluster, Savannah River, and Elora types. Woodland types of Yadkin and Copena also are represented. A number of Otarre-Swannanoa points bridge the gap, indicating a Late Archaic-Early Woodland transition occupation. Pottery specimens are mostly of the Middle Woodland Cartersville variety with check- and simple-stamped surface decorations. One specimen of Dunlap fabric marked has been identified from a deeply buried context suggesting limited Early Woodland occupation. Specimens of ground stone also are represented and manufactured from a locally found, greenish colored slate. These implements appear to be utilitarian hoes and axes with a lesser quantity of highly polished fragments. One such tool, a polished meta-slate axe (or celt) displays a hafting element as well as excessive use wear. This particular artifact is representative of the ground and polished slate tools that occur throughout the site.

Elk River Stemmed point from the Hardin Bridge site.

Also of interest is a hafted biface not typically found in Georgia that was identified during analysis. This Elk River Stemmed point was made from a Ridge and Valley chert (likely of the Conasauga variety) and supports the Late Archaic component of the site. The point type, while common in northern Alabama and central Tennessee, is rarely found in Georgia (Justice 1987). Also, a drill crafted of the same Conasauga chert was recovered, exhibiting basal hafting and a bi-convex cross section. Pending analysis of flotation samples from numerous features may reveal greater information regarding foraging and nascent agriculture in the Etowah Valley.

Drill from the Hardin Bridge site.

Numerous events associated with this project have provided outreach opportunities to both adults and children. R. Jeannine Windham has presented information on the Hardin Bridge site for local archaeological societies and a radio show. In addition, a large outreach event was co-organized with the Georgia Department of Transportation and provided an opportunity to discuss and participate in archaeological and cultural activities through an Archaeology Day. Greater information on the site and outreach events can be seen here.

References cited

Justice, Noel D.
1987 Stone Age Spear and Arrow Points of the Midcontinental and Eastern United States. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

In possibly our busiest winter to date, New South Associates is currently at work on two data recovery projects and is about to begin a third, in addition to a number of survey and testing projects, including smaller corridor or bridge surveys conducted in Bartow, Lowndes, Douglas, Coweta, Paulding, and Washington counties.

Data recovery excavations at the Gay Farms site complex in Randolph County are ongoing. Recently, we took a two-week break from excavations at the historic site to focus on the prehistoric component. The site represents a Late Archaic campsite and several diagnostic points were recovered. Brad Botwick is currently in Augusta, directing the data recovery excavations at site 9RI1110. The site is associated with the Springfield Community, an early free African-American site. Excavations at the site are expected to address questions about African-American life in Augusta between 1865 and the turn of the twentieth century.

At the recent SEAC meetings in Little Rock, R. Jeannine Windham of New South Associates presented research of the Plum Creek Wetland Mitigation Bank located in Miller County. Her paper, A GIS Approach to the Plum Creek Quarry/Workshop Site Complex, was included within a symposium focusing on the interior Coastal Plain. Several papers within this symposium focused on research in southwest Georgia that presented a unique perspective to landscape utilization within the heterogenic landscape of long leaf pine forests and wetlands that is pervasive in the region.

In December, Jeannine Windham will begin excavations at 9BR34. This multi-component site is located on a levee and terrace of the Etowah River. It is our hope that excavations will provide greater information pertaining to Middle Woodland hinterland occupations in the Etowah Valley and Late Archaic lithic reduction of chert and slate.

Edwards-Pitman Environmental, Inc. (EPEI) recently completed Phase III fieldwork at 9PU20 near Hawkinsville, GA. The excavations were conducted on behalf of the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) as part of a proposed bridge replacement over Big Tucsawatchee Creek (also known as Big Creek) on State Route 230. The site is located on a fluvial terrace overlooking the creek and consists of a large, high-density scatter of lithics produced mainly from Coastal Plain chert.

Previous Phase I and II investigations by GDOT archaeologists in 1997 yielded two cultural features and a large collection of artifacts associated with Middle Paleoindian to Late Mississippian occupations. Lithic tools and debitage manufactured from locally available chert comprised the bulk of the assemblage. Most notable was the recovery of two Middle Paleoindian projectile points (Simpson and Suwannee), as well as those associated with Early Archaic, Late Archaic, and Mississippian occupations. The ceramic collection, while small, included fiber-tempered, Refuge, Deptford, Swift Creek, possible Etowah, and Lamar components.

Figure 1. Edwards-Pitman archaeologists and field mascot, Hunter, at Big Tucsawhatchee Creek Site (9PU20).

Recent data recovery investigations at 9PU20 were conducted under the supervision of Alvin J. Banguilan and included the excavation of nine small blocks totaling 39 m2 (see Figure 1). Despite the fact that only a narrow strip of right-of-way on both sides of SR 230 was examined, a large and diverse collection of artifacts was recovered and features were identified. Based on our initial impressions of the overall assemblage (we are only now beginning labwork), the site appears to have been extensively utilized during the Late Paleo/Early Archaic transition, Early Archaic, Late Archaic, Early to Middle Woodland, and Middle to Late Mississippian sub-periods. The collection consists of a large quantity of lithic debitage, projectile points, early and late stage bifaces, blade and bifacial core/ tools, scrapers, prismatic blades, and numerous retouched and utilized flake tools (see Figure 2). Lithic diagnostics that appear to have been recovered from undisturbed deposits include Taylor Side Notched, Kirk Corner Notched, and various Late Archaic and terminal Late Archaic Stemmed varieties. Woodland and Mississippian components, while numerous, appear mixed and largely limited to between 0–45 cm below surface. Further analysis should reveal if any additional spatial patterning exists in the upper strata.

Figure 2. Selected Projectile Points recovered from 9PU20.

A total of five features were identified during EPEI’s excavation; four, including two hearth-like features, one rock cluster, and one possible hearth maintenance/cleanout feature were found between 70–90 cm below surface and appear to be associated with the site’s Kirk/Palmer phase component. The remaining feature was encountered at 113 cm below surface and consisted of a faint soil lens associated with a Taylor Side Notched point and a small cluster of debitage and tools. It should be noted that the Simpson and Suwannee points mentioned earlier were found during GDOT’s Phase II investigation in shallow deposits mixed with later Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian components. At present, it remains unclear whether an intact Middle Paleoindian deposit is present at the site, although lithic material clearly extended below the identified Kirk/Palmer and Taylor horizons.

What became increasingly clear during the course of our field investigation was that site occupation was wide-ranging, extensive, and heavily oriented towards the local abundance of high quality Coastal Plain chert. Chert nodules could readily be seen in the shallow portions of Big Tucsawhatchee Creek and along its banks. Moreover, large chert outcroppings and dense of the site. Evidence of quarrying activity was also apparent in this area along with moderate scattering of debitage and tools. concentrations of boulder-size chert fragments were identified along an adjacent landform approximately 1 km northeast of the site. Evidence of quarrying activity was also apparent in this area along with moderate scattering of debitage and tools.