Archaeological Investigations at the Dixon Site (9PU116) Pulaski County, Georgia

This report documents a public archaeology investigation conducted at the Dixon site (9PU 11 6) in Pulaski County, Georgia, a few miles no1t h of the City of Hawkinsville. One complete Clovis point was found in a borrow pit by the site's land owner and the base of another lanceolate point was found in the displaced pit's soil that was used to construct an access road across the prope1ty. This suggested that an Early Paleoindian (likely Clovis) component is present at the site. The landowner subsequently dug a backhoe trench at the site and in it found a cache of 32 chert preforms before back-filling the trench. Once the authors of this report became involved, the disturbed back- filled soil in the trench was screened to recover any overlooked artifacts and a controlled, stratigraphic, block was excavated near the trench to understand the site's formation and culture history. The work revealed occupations as early as the Late Archaic period, but no unequivocal Paleoindian artifacts were found. Analysis of thousands of stone artifacts from both the backhoe trench and the excavation block suggests that the primary occupation at the site was during the Late Archaic period. Occupations also occurred during the Woodland period, but only minor traces of Mississippian period peoples were found. This document reports on the results of archaeological investigations at the Dixon site (9PU 116) located near the Ocmulgee River in Pulaski County, Georgia (Figure 1.0 I). Field investigations were conducted intermittently between O l February 2013 and 25 March 2017 by an all-volunteer workforce. The project was organized as a joint venture of the Ocmulgee Archaeological Society (OAS) of Macon, Georgia, and the South Georgia Archaeological Research Team (SOGART) headquartered in Douglas, Georgia. M. Jared Wood, Ph.D., of Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Georgia, and S. Dwight Kirkland, M.A., of Southeastern Horizons, Inc., Douglas Georgia (both are members of SOGART) provided the field supervision. Georgia Southern University support ed the project through the use of surveying equipment (total station and LiDAR unit) and volunteer anthropology students.