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:
- 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.
Posted online on Monday, April 27th, 2009