Leake Site exhibition opens in Columbus
The Gateway to the Past: Georgia’s Leake Site exhibition will be on display through Sunday, September 23, 2012 at the Columbus Museum, on Wynnton Road east of downtown Columbus. Using excavated artifacts from the Leake site and the Columbus Museum’s collection of Chattahoochee Valley objects, this history exhibition shows visitors what life was like for prehistoric American Indians living in what is now northern Georgia. The exhibition also includes an interactive audio/visual tour. Admission is free. Read more about the Leake site on this website by clicking here.
In an article in the Fall 2011 issue of Early Georgia (vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 173–200), Scot Keith discusses evidence for long-distance trade and exchange in Middle Woodland times (from about 350 BC to AD 650), using data from the Leake Site, near Cartersville. Members of the SGA in 2011 received that issue of Early Georgia as a benefit of membership. 
Scot Keith, Archaeologist and Principal Investigator with New South Associates will be giving a talk regarding the Leake site at the Tellus Science Museum near Cartersville, Thursday, February 3, 2011.
Kennesaw State University journalism student Elizabeth Johnson put together an eight-plus minute video documentary for her senior capstone project about the efforts to preserve and protect the Leake site in Cartersville, Georgia. Go to the full story to read more about the preservation efforts at the Leake site (you can help, too!), and for a link to the video.
World-traveler Ted Conover argues in his new book that roads are our most extensive human artifact on earth. Travel routes can persist for centuries. Judging by historic footpaths, Georgia’s prehistoric peoples tended to follow ridges, avoiding swamps and stream crossings. We know from the asssortment of artifacts found that ancient peoples traveled to places far away or traded with people who came from far away (like the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts, and deep in the continental interior). What do we know of those travel routes and footpaths? How, for example, did peoples of the Leake Site, in northwest Georgia, cross the terrain and interact with peoples of far-flung places where Swift Creek-style decorated ceramics have also been found?
If you haven’t visited 
At their February meeting, Greater Atlanta Archaeological Society members will hear a presentation by Scot Keith about the Leake Site, a primarily Middle Woodland mound and village site, which is near Cartersville and the Etowah Mounds. The meeting is Tuesday, February 9th. The presentation begins at 7:30, and Scot will have some artifacts you can look at if you arrive early!
Archaeologist Scot Keith reports on the Leake site, which is west of Cartersville in Bartow County not far from the Etowah Mounds site, and partly within the right-of-way of Highways 61/113. The site has been named to the 2010 Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation’s Places in Peril listing, which will aid Keith and others to raise money to protect the remaining portions of this important Woodland and Mississippian site. The full story includes excellent aerial photographs.
On November 4th 2009, the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation announced its list of Georgia’s top ten Places in Peril, which includes the Leake Archaeological Site, a rich Middle Woodland and Late Mississippian-period prehistoric settlement on the outskirts of Cartersville. Scot Keith, an archaeologist who lead recent excavations at the Leake Site, notes, “with help from the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation and numerous volunteers, we will be conducting many activities in the next year (and beyond) to foster public awareness of the site and its important place in history. This will include public education days at the site, community meetings, interviews, articles, partnerships and grants, research and fieldwork, and regular