Efforts of members of The Gwinnett Archaeological Research Society and The Fort Daniel Foundation have finally paid off. On December 21, 2012, Gwinnett County closed on the 4.5-acre tract within which the entire fort site is situated. The County shall, in turn, lease the property to the Foundation, which will be responsible for developing both the land and an educational outreach program. Details of the lease agreement are being worked out, and it is expected that the Foundation will assume its responsibilities by the end of March. Already, students from local schools have had the opportunity to get their hands dirty and learn something about archaeology and about Fort Daniel’s connection with our frontier history and the Creek Indian War.

Don’t forget to mark your calendar for the Spring Meeting co-sponsored by SGA and Georgia Gwinnett College! The date is Saturday, May 19 starting at 8am in the state-of-the art Student Center. Click here to access a PDF of the Spring Meeting Program (final version).

The third issue of the newsletter of the Gwinnett County Chapter of SGA, the Gwinnett Archaeological Research Society (GARS), is now available. The newsletter is named Gwinnett Archaeology Bulletin. GARS members are planning to co-host (with the Fort Daniel Foundation) an afternoon expo at the Fort Daniel site on May 19th, as part of the 2012 Archaeology Month activities.

On Monday, April 2, 2012, volunteers from the Gwinnett Archaeological Research Society, TRC staff, and others from the SGA met at the offices of the cultural resources firm TRC, Inc. in Norcross to roll the Archaeology Month 2012 posters and stuff them in mailing tubes destined for Georgia school districts. Thanks to all the volunteers for finishing this important work.

Mark your calendar: the SGA’s Spring Meeting will be held on Saturday May 19th, as part of 2012 Archaeology Month celebrations. This year’s Archaeology Month theme is Commemorating the Bicentennial of the War of 1812. We will meet at Georgia Gwinnett College, which is co-sponsoring the meeting. In addition, the group will tour Fort Daniel, which dates to the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The well-attended October 2011 Frontier Faire at Fort Daniel, sponsored by the Gwinnett Archaeological Research Society, a Chapter of the SGA, and the Fort Daniel Foundation, hosted a Trading Post, tours, a candle-maker, both Girl and Boy Scouts, a food area and more. The 2011 Frontier Faire is considered a definite success and will serve as a model for next year’s Faire.

Where was Fort Daniel? This frontier fort was long believed to have been on a ridge-top knoll on Hog Mountain in Gwinnett County. In 2007, the Gwinnett Archaeological Research Society, a Chapter of the SGA, began a research program under the direction of Dr. James D’Angelo to locate physical remains of the fort using two forms of subsurface remote sensing, metal detection and ground penetrating radar. This detailed article reports the happy results of that research.

The Gwinnett County Chapter of SGA, Gwinnett Archaeological Research Society (GARS), along with Fort Daniel Foundation (FDF) members are sponsoring a Frontier Faire to be held Saturday, October 15, 2011, from 10am to 5pm and on Sunday, October 16, 2011, from 11am to 4pm. All are cordially invited to attend.

The Gwinnett County Chapter of SGA, Gwinnett Archaeological Research Society (GARS), along with Fort Daniel Foundation (FDF) members are sponsoring a Frontier Faire to be held Saturday, October 15, 2011, from 10am to 5pm and on Sunday, October 16, 2011, from 11am to 4pm. All SGA members and their guests are cordially invited to attend.

The Atlanta Regional Commission has recently released a draft of its PLAN 2040: Regional Resource Plan. Among the many important archaeological and historical resources highlighted in this 89-page document is Fort Daniel, a late 18th/early 19th century frontier settlement in Gwinnett County.

The Gwinnett Archaeological Research Society teamed with the Fort Daniel Foundation to again combine their public archaeology event with FDF’s 2nd annual Frontier Faire at the Fort Daniel site in Gwinnett County, May 22-23. A highlight of the weekend was a brick making project employing methods and technology that would have been used in the late 18th–early 19th centuries.

Read 11alive’s report on the Fort Daniel Faire and Public Archaeology Event, held at the Fort Daniel historical site in Gwinnett County in late May 2010. The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation named Fort Daniel to its 2009 Places In Peril list in recognition of the importance of this military site. Visit the Fort Daniel Foundation website and learn how you can help save this important place, which is presently on private land.

The Fort Daniel Foundation has scheduled its annual meeting for 7:00 pm on December 15th at the Gwinnett Justice and Administration Center (GJAC) in Lawrenceville in the 2nd floor conference room center.

The Gwinnett Archaeological Research Society will be having work day at Fort Daniel this Saturday, November 14, weather permitting, beginning about 9:30 am.

GARS and Friends of Fort Daniel (FFD), a special committee created for Fort Daniel preservation efforts, have had a lot going on since the last Profile. Since Fort Daniel’s listing as one of ten historic properties listed the Georgia Trust’s 2009 Places in Peril, GARS and FFD have submitted an application for a Georgia Trust [...]

Figure 1. Trench feature with hearth feature in background, both at the bottom of the plowzone. The Gwinnett Archaeological Research Society (GARS) has put excavations at Fort Daniel on hold until analysis of recovered artifacts, representing more than one year of investigations at the site, and preparation of a technical report are completed. On the [...]

This year the GARS Archaeology Month event was a public archaeology day at the Creekside Rock shelter located on the historic Elisha Winn property in Dacula, on May 3 and 4. The site was first identified, recorded, and excavated by GARS in 2006. Although contending with intermittent showers and poor turnout on Saturday, two large [...]

Tom Gresham talking about rock pile sites at the February GARS meeting. The Gwinnett Archaeological Research Society has moved their monthly meeting date to the first Wednesday of the month, but is still meeting 7:30 to 9:00 PM in the Gwinnett County Justice and Administration Building, 75 Langley Road, Lawrenceville. In February we had a [...]

The BHAS members used the September meeting as an annual planning meeting. Later in the fall we had two programs presented. One was by member Fred Scheidler on October 18th on Michoacan Bells. It started with the metalworking of the Peruvian Vicus culture, through the Moche empire, and then to Mexico. Several bells from Michoacan [...]

Figure 1. English leaded crystal from Fort Daniel. GARS continues its study of the Fort Daniel site (9GW623) in Gwinnett County, having completed the first phase of investigations on November 9 after 16 weekends in the field. Results of the investigations to date were presented at the Fall SGA meeting. A PowerPoint presentation in PDF [...]

In Fall 2007, SGA met at the Gwinnett Environmental and Heritage Center, 2020 Clean Water Drive (near The Mall of Georgia), Buford. The Search For Fort Daniel Jim D’Angelo, TRC and Gwinnett Archaeological Research Society The traditional location of one of Georgia’s early frontier forts, Fort Daniel, has been marked with a roadside historical sign [...]

The Gwinnett Archaeological Research Society (GARS) has been conducting an archaeological investigation at the traditional site of one of Georgia’s earliest frontier forts, Fort Daniel, in Hog Mountain (Hamilton Mill), Gwinnett County, Georgia. New study of old documents shows that Fort Daniel was not original to the site, but rather constructed in late 1813 to [...]