A Report of the Intensive Archaeological Investigations of Site 9GE333 on Reynolds Plantation, Greene County, Georgia

This report documents the results of data recovery phase archaeological investigations on site 9GE333, located on Reynolds Plantation in Greene County, Georgia. 9GE333 is a large multicomponent site with components dating to the Late Archaic, Middle Woodland, late Mississippian, and Historic Euro-American periods. The work was conducted at the request of Reynolds Plantation, a golf and residential community, located on present-day Lake Oconee in Greene and Putnam Counties, Georgia. The site was originally recorded by archaeologists from the University of Georgia during the Wallace Mitigation Survey in the late 1970s. The site was revisited by SAS during a 1997 survey for Reynolds Plantation. At the time of the SAS visit, the archaeologists noted that a new road being graded by the adjoining property owner was exposing a number of subsoil-intruding features (mainly postmolds). As a result of the SAS investigations, the site was recommended Eligible for Nomination to the National Register of Historic Places after consultation with federal and state review agencies. At the request of Reynolds Plantation, additional field investigations were conducted by Southeastern Archeological Services, Inc. (SAS), during the period of September 1999 through May 2000.

9GE333 site is located in southwestern Greene County, Georgia, on the west side of Richland Creek and opposite the mouth of Beaverdam Creek. Richland Creek is a major tributary of the Oconee River (now Lake Oconee). The site is located on elevated ground and overlooks the floodplains of Richland Creek on the east and two minor tributary streams on the north and south. The site is located within an area used for farming and logging for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The most severe site disturbance was initiated in the latter part of the twentieth century when most of the site area was developed as subdivisions.

The field work began with systematic shovel testing on a 10-meter grid, systematic backhoe trenching on a 20-meter grid, excavation of 1-x-1-meter test units placed across the site, surface inspection, and mapping. Within the portion of the site owned by Reynolds Plantation, the field work defined occupation areas, midden deposits, and subsoil-intruding features, associated primarily with the Middle Woodland period as defined by early Swift Creek ceramics associated with two Late Lamar farmsteads. Ceramics associated with two or more Lamar farmsteads were found scattered across the investigated area.

The primary investigations by SAS consisted of the machine stripping of an area located at the edge of the Reynolds Plantation property that had been earlier graded by the adjoining property owners for water drainage. A block excavation measuring 14 by 29 meters was stripped exposing more than one hundred subsoil-intruding features, most of which are thought to be associated with the Swift Creek occupation. Included were post alignments that defined a four-meter diameter Swift Creek house and a large subsoil-intruding feature now thought to be a Swift Creek pit house. A portion of a late Lamar rectangular structure was also recorded.

Based on the results of the SAS investigations, Reynolds Plantation has decided to preserve in place an area adjoining the block excavation which contains midden deposits associated with the Swift Creek and Lamar occupations. The archaeological remains found in this area clearly retain significant research potential and are recommended eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places