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By Benjamin A. Roberts

2010 International Conference on Archaeology in Conflict Vienna, Austria

This presentation provides a first person summary of United States Army activities during Task Force Iron Gimlet (TFIG) formed in December, 2008 to encourage community improvement efforts in the Abu Ghraib and Nassar Wa Salaam communities and surrounding areas west of Baghdad, Iraq. TFIG was intended to empower Iraqis to conduct many of the community development projects themselves, with funding largely provided through Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP) initiatives at the Battalion and below levels. Included in the projects TFIG conducted was a contract for improving the tourism infrastructure around the historic Ziggurat at Aqar Quf. Lessons learned from this intervention are reported in this presentation.

Stability and Support Operations (SOSO) and Civil-Military Operations (CMO) call for complex strategies for both cultural heritage preservation practices and economic development activities. The U.S. Army's CERP is one such program and was developed in Iraq in 2003 to allow rapid response to localized problems at the lowest level possible. CERP is successful because it provides opportunities for the local populace to obtain steady employment while at the same time encouraging shared cultural heritage identity through the protection of cultural heritage sites in a classic win-win scenario.


By Eric Poplin

2009 Society for Historical Archaeology Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada

Royal Island, The Bahamas, suffered an attack on private property on 12 September 1814 by crewmen of the American privateer Midas. This raid destroyed all but one building, with the remaining buildings and facilities associated with four plantation settlements all burned. The residents' personal goods and wealth were taken, with most residents fleeing to the bush to save themselves from injury. Even the tomb of the wife of Benjamin Barnett, principal planter on Royal Island, was broken open in search of plunder. Reputedly in retaliation for the burning of Washington, this act prompted a public apology from James Monroe, US Secretary of State, and the revocation of the Midas letter of marquee. Recent archaeological investigations at EL 53 within the Barnett settlement revealed artifacts that appear to be directly related to this raid as well as evidence of the loss and reconstruction of the plantation settlement.


By Alex Sweeney

2009 Society for Historical Archaeology Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada

The Yamasee Indians, a multiethnic conglomeration of Native Americans, lived along the lower coastal plain of South Carolina between 1683 and 1715. Altamaha Town, the capital of the Lower Yamasee Indians, was likely occupied as early as 1695 and abandoned shortly after the start of the Yamasee War in 1715. Archival documentation and maps have provided researchers information regarding Yamasee ethnohistoric origins, political structure, relations with English traders, and archaeological site locations. Recent excavations at Altamaha Town recovered more than 60,000 artifacts and identified numerous cultural features associated with several structures. Information derived from historical documentation, along with the data from the excavations at Altamaha Town, have allowed a more concrete perspective into the lifeways of this historic group of indigenous people. This paper summarizes the field investigations and the ongoing research of the data collected, and provides initial interpretations from the Altamaha Town excavations.


By Jeff Sherard

2009 Bulletin of the Alabama Museum of Natural History 27:29-42

Analysis of fired daub, a construction material of tempered clay commonly associated with the walls and ceilings of Mississippian buildings, has the potential to reveal otherwise unknowable architectural details. For Mound V at the Moundville site, daub rubble was classified by type of surface finish, thickness, and interior impression. Quantitative differences were found among areas of daub fall corresponding to different architectural components. The main wall of Structure 1, an earth lodge, was built up around horizontal lathing of whole cane tied to wall posts, often bundled. Impressions against flattened wooden splints were also found. This wall was hand-smoothed and painted in red and white. The daubed interior ceiling of the same structure, in contrast, was unpainted with the daub applied against a coarse fabric of split cane bound with whole cane stringers. Daub from an adjacent building, Structure 2, had a gritty clay plaster finish and was set against a combination of split cane fabric and whole cane lathing. These modes of construction differ from previously reported Mississippian architectural remains, and highlight the potential role of the spatial analysis of daub in understanding the variability in this architecture.


By Carolyn Rock

2009 Early Georgia, Vol 37(2):216-243

This report provides a general analysis of Protohistoric period ceramics recovered from archaeological sites within the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, located on the southern Georgia coast in Camden County, Georgia. Although several separate reports have been compiled concerning archaeology at Kings Bay, none have presented a sufficient summary of the Protohistoric period. Part of the reason is due to recent findings concerning the nature and origin of grog-tempered pottery on the lower Georgia coast. Originally typed as Wilmington or Savannah in many of the reports, we now understand that much of the grog-tempered ware recovered was probably manufactured during the terminal late Prehistoric and Protohistoric Spanish Mission periods. We are still uncertain as to how far back into prehistoric culture this particular series may have extended, or whether other grog-tempered manifestations accompanied earlier ceramic assemblages. Nevertheless, the existence of grog-tempered pottery as a major late prehistoric and protohistoric component is now fairly well established. My task was to conduct a review of the Kings Bay reports, including artifact descriptions and analysis, and reassess the findings in the light of what we now know.

Protohistoric ceramics found at Kings Bay sites include the San Pedro series, made by the local Timucua Indians, and the Altamaha/San Marcos series made by the succeeding Guale or Yamassee Indians (it has been argued that the late Mocama Timucua also made San Marcos pottery in the seventeenth century). Slight mixing of ceramic styles may have occurred during the transition from San Pedro to Altamaha/San Marcos. At some sites, Spanish olive jar and even a few fragments of Spanish majolica were recovered, suggesting that these locations experienced communication and trade (either direct or indirect) with the Spanish mission network.


By Carol Poplin

2008 65th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Charlotte, North Carolina

Presented in a session called "Crossing the Combahee - On land, Underwater, and In-between." The session was about brockingtoncrm.com's archaeological investigations at Combahee Ferry. Those investigations were undertaken ahead of road widening and bridge replacement activities.

The 1966 National Historic Protection Act generated a cultural resource management industry eager to conduct new federal and state mandated archaeological and historical investigations. Until recently, sharing this information with the public has not been a priority. This paper explores the challenges of presenting archaeology to the public within the framework of CRM and offers ideas for transcending the boundaries that often exist between archaeological research and public interpretation. The public program designed for the SC Department of Transportation's Combahee Ferry Historic District mitigation project serves as a case study.


By Jeff Sherard

2007 Southeastern Archaeological Conference

Site 9FN341 is a large prehistoric site situated on the first terrace along the eastern bank of the Toccoa River in Fannin County, Georgia. The site is situated in the Blue Ridge Physiographic Province which is in close proximity to the Chickamauga Basin in eastern Tennessee and the southwestern portion of the Appalachian Summit of North Carolina. Archaeological survey and excavations, while having a long history in north Georgia, have been conducted on a limited basis in the Blue Ridge area proper. Much of the work in northern Georgia has been focused on important sites and large survey projects located near Carters Lake, Allatoona Lake and the Nacoochee Valley. While these areas are located in the Piedmont and Ridge and Valley Districts of Georgia, they occupy areas in the state that seem to have been inhabited by prehistoric populations that had some level of interaction with groups occupying the Blue Ridge. As such, the location of 9FN341 plays a critical role in defining the site within an archaeological context. Present day 9FN341 is located at the junction of important prehistoric cultural groups. Presented here is an interpretation of the potential architectural expressions encountered during excavations at this site.


By Carolyn Rock with contributions by Rita Folse Elliott and Terry Jackson

The Coastal Management Program of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

From November 2005 to September 2006, an archaeological site inventory was conducted in Camden County. The inventory consisted of an analysis of 266 previously documented sites, and a search for additional sites through interviews with collectors, historians, and local citizens. In addition, a sample of systematic surface surveys was conducted. A total of 119 new sites were documented, an increase of 45% over those 266 recorded from the past forty years. All new sites (except underwater sites) were visited and their characteristics listed on official Georgia Archaeological Site File (GASF) forms, to be stored at GASF in Athens for future research.

Most new sites were located in the western part of the county, an area virtually ignored during the course of earlier archaeological work. Time periods for prehistoric sites ranged from late Paleo Indian (Dalton – ca. 8000 B.C.), very rare on the coast, through Contact Period. Almost all were typed as artifact scatters. Historic sites found ranged from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, and included plantations, sunken ships, homesteads, sawmills, rice mills, docks, dikes and burial sites.

It is anticipated that the documentation of these new sites will aid in future archaeological research, as well as in conservation planning as Camden County grows and develops.


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