Chieftain’s Museum Archaeologist Pat Garrow will present his findings from the December 2012 excavation at the Cave Spring Log Cabin. You can learn more about the work at the Cave Spring Log Cabin by clicking here. Representatives from the Georgia Chapter of the Trail of Tears Association will be on hand to put Mr. Garrow’s work in context. The talk is scheduled for March 25, 6:30 p.m. at the Cave Spring Elementary School in Cave Spring, Georgia.

In a recent article, Dan Bigman of the University of Georgia describes using electromagnetic (EM) induction techniques to investigate two areas adjacent to the Funeral Mound at Ocmulgee National Monument, near Macon. These techniques allowed Bigman to learn more about the archaeological resources in the park without disturbing them. Using non-invasive methods allows archaeologists to learn about buried evidence of the past without disturbing it. You can visit the park yourself and see the area near the Funeral Mound for free.

The Greater Atlanta Chapter of the SGA will meet on Tuesday, May 8th, 2012, at 7:30 pm to hear a presentation by Michael Bunn, of Columbus. He will speak to the GAAS about the poorly known Creek Wars as they relate to the War of 1812. As Mr. Bunn notes, “Too few of the sites at which they were fought are interpreted for the public, and too few people understand their importance.” The topic is in accordance with May being Archaeology Month in Georgia, with a theme this year of the War of 1812 Bicentennial. The GAAS monthly meeting will take place at Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta. The meeting is free and open to the public.

Dennis Blanton, Native American Archaeology Curator at Fernbank Museum of Natural History, will be speaking at the Wednesday, April 13th GAAS meeting located at Fernbank Museum at 7:30pm. Please note the date has been changed from Tuesday to Wednesday the 13th. The lecture will focus on the smoking ritual in the Mississippian Southeast. Blanton’s findings demonstrate that smoking became an indispensable religious practice but that it was manipulated to accommodate shifting social conditions.

Ethnohistorian Robbie Ethridge, in Creek Country: The Creek Indians and Their World (2003: University of North Carolina Press) describes “a distant, lost world—the world of the Creek Indians at the close of the eighteenth century.” She unites archaeological and historical data to illuminate this largely overlooked period. Read Dr. Ethridge’s book and you will understand Georgia’s early history anew.

Help save a log building in Gordon County that’s on the National Register of Historic Places and is considered “the oldest home in Gordon County.” Meet on Saturday, March 12, 2011 at 10:30 AM at Rockdale Plantation to join the effort.

Long-time SGA member Pat Garrow’s new book, The Chieftain Excavations, 1969-1971 reports the results of excavations Pat conducted on the Chieftains site, home of Cherokee leader Major Ridge (died, 1839) in Rome from 1969 to 1971. Analyses clearly indicate that George Lavender’s Store had been located in the north side yard of Major Ridge’s home, and had stood over the stone-lined cellar found during the excavations. Read more about this interesting research—and follow a link to order the volume in paperback or as a PDF—in the full story.

Charles Hudson, in his 2003 novel, Conversations with the High Priest of Coosa (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press), relies in part on archaeology to inform his presentation of imagined conversations between a Native American leader and a Spanish visitor in the early 1500s. Hudson used archaeological information along with archival materials to imagine the world views, or belief systems, of these two men from such different places and cultures. Coosa was a 16th-century chiefdom based in northwest Georgia. Consider how novelists have used archaeology to inform their stories….

The annual Seven Islands Artifact ID Day on October 23, 2010, was hosted by the Ocmulgee Archaeological Society (OAS) and the Butts County Historical Society (BCHS). Members of Taylor County High School’s “Benjamin Hawkins Historical, Expeditionary, and Geographical Society (BHEGS) volunteered to help manage the archaeology tent. Now in its fourth year, the event has continued to gain support and receive more visitors.

The Society for Georgia Archaeology’s seventeenth annual Georgia Archaeology Awareness promotion, Archaeology Month 2010, had as its theme Making the Past Come to Life: Exploring Ancient Techniques. Making Archaeology Month 2010 happen involved several events. Governor Perdue signed the proclamation designating May as Georgia Archaeology Month on May 25 at the Capitol. Volunteers met on April 26th at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History to package posters, fliers announcing the lesson plan, and surveys for the teachers to return to the SGA. Finally, the SGA’s annual gathering for the spring meeting was held in Albany, Georgia on May 14–16, 2010, complete with demonstrators and the ArchaeoBus.

The May 2010 issue of The SAA Archaeological Record, which is published by the Society for American Archaeology, includes several articles discussing how archaeologists deal with race. As the editors note, “The premise of this thematic volume is based on an ever-growing consensus in anthropology that the concept of race is best described as an expression of cultural ideology and not a biological reality” (page 3).

Consider visiting the Chief Vann house, built over two hundred years ago just west of Chatsworth. It was the first brick home in the Cherokee nation. The house overlooks James Vann’s land, called Spring Place Plantation, and what we now call the Old Federal Road. This route followed an earlier foot trail and lead from east-central Georgia to the northwest, eventually crossing into Tennessee. What advantages did Vann, a Cherokee leader and businessman, have that contributed to his wealth and influence?

Charles Hudson’s book The Southeastern Indians, originally published in 1976, remains a must-have book for the library of anyone seriously interested in Georgia’s past. This book, with its maps and black-and-white photographic plates, is an excellent place to learn about the native peoples who lived in Georgia. It remains available in paperback at a reasonable cost.

Across the Southeast, before Europeans arrived, Native Peoples prized the wood of a tree that inhabited only a small portion of the vast interior of the North American continent. The tree is commonly known as the osage orange. The fruit of this tree looks like a lumpy bright green to yellow-green softball. The tree is thorny, too. Read the full story to learn why North American archaeologists ponder this strange species.

NAGPRA stands for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. NAGPRA is a federal law. In March 2010, NAGPRA has been in the news three times….

The International Union for Conservation of Nature has recently released a report called American Bison: Status Survey and Conservation Guidelines 2010. The report discusses the current status of American bison (Bison bison). You may be interested in a discussion of the history of the bison that is included as background for the report’s focus on conserving the species and the ecological restoration necessary to accomplish that for this large herbivore.

Perhaps you watched Steve Jobs and other Apple people introduce the iPad on 27 January 2010…. Fans of archaeology might have noted that one of the major demonstrations, of the program Keynote, used the topic “Seven Wonders of the World,” which focused on selected archaeological sites. What does it mean that they chose an archaeological topic to punch their high-profile product introduction?

The Bartow History Museum in downtown Cartersville invites you to visit! The Museum has interactive exhibits and also hosts monthly lectures. Road trip: combine a trip to the Etowah Mounds and a visit to this Museum!

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)?

Georgia’s Jekyll Island has an interesting past, detailed here. The Island is owned by the the people of Georgia and managed on their behalf by the Jekyll Island Authority. It’s a natural and cultural treasure most of us don’t know enough about.

What insights into our current agricultural and food production dilemmas can we get from prehistoric Native American practices? Check out David J. Minderhout and Andrea T. Franz’s article, “Native American Horticulture in the Northeast,” discussed here.

The University of Georgia Libraries have a special section called the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, which offers research materials in digital form online. This map, dated 1796, offers insights into the encroachment of Euroamericans into the interior of what is now Georgia, which was then held by Native American groups.

Do some research online and save fuel! Georgia’s Secretary of State’s website includes the Virtual Vault, which contains historical documents, records, maps, etc., dating back to 1733, as well as recent photographs.

The Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta announces a lecture by SGA President and Fernbank Curator of Native American Archaeology Dennis Blanton, to be held on Sunday, November 1st, at 4 pm. The lecture is titled “De Soto’s Footsteps: New Archaeological Evidence in Georgia.”

The Society for American Archaeology, a national organization with over 7000 members, is concerned about Senate Bill 409, which would swap some federal lands for other property. The SAA is concerned about the loss of protections to archaeological sites on the lands that will pass out of federal ownership.

Every once in a while news about the archaeology of southeastern North America is reported in mainstream publications. In June, the New York Times includes a report on carvings found on the wall of a cave in southeast Kentucky which may be an extremely early version of Sequoyah’s Cherokee syllabary. The final syllabary had 85 characters, each representing a syllable.

Long time SGA member and primitive technology researcher Scott Jones has just published a book that is a compilation of his articles from the past decade related to primitive technology and experimental archaeology. Scott has practiced primitive technology for two decades and now makes a living presenting the subject to the general public (always with [...]

Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) archaeologists met in September at New Echota State Historic Site in Gordon County with members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) Elder’s Advisory Council and Federal Highway Administration to discuss the proposed bridge replacements and roadway improvements to State Route (SR) 225. Tribal elders and members of EBCI [...]

Dave Davis is currently assisting Pat Garrow on further analysis of the artifacts recovered from the museum grounds in 1969-1971. We look forward to new insights from this important Cherokee center in northwest Georgia. The Chieftains looks forward to welcoming Dr. David Hally for a book signing and lecture regarding his new University of Alabama [...]

The OAS continues has continued its work throughout Middle Georgia this fall, and has quite a few interesting activities to report. Mark Barnes, recently retired National Park Service Archaeologist, gave the OAS a great talk on the old and new theories about Clovis and pre-Clovis sites on November 5, particularly relating to the Borax Lake [...]

The Muskogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma and the member tribes of the Southeastern Muskogee (Creek) Confederacy are continuing their ongoing research projects in 2007, which will provide archaeologists and historians a more complete understanding of the Southeast’s Indigenous Peoples. For decades, the Creeks have been frustrated because many official documents, historical markers and publications contained [...]

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 [...]

Prominently displayed on the office wall of the Muskogee (Creek) Tribe’s Chief Justice, Patrick Moore, is a tattered old flag. At first glance, one might assume it was a Civil War ancestor’s regimental banner. The Okmulgee, Oklahoma attorney, though, will be quick to tell you that it is a 200-year-old battle ensign of the Creek [...]

The topic of the 2005 lesson plan, which meets CRCT Domains for 8th Grade History, is the Indian Removal of the early 1800s. The lesson plan details this period in Georgia’s history, suggests writing assignments, and explains how to make a puzzle called “Go Figure!” Click here to access the PDF of this lesson plan. [...]