Phase IIa Cultural Resource Investigations Within the Proposed Beach Creek and Tallapoosa Water Supply Systems

Garrow & Associates, Inc., conducted Phase IIa testing on 110 sites within the flood pools of the proposed Beach Creek and Tallapoosa River water supply systems from May 14 through June 16, 1995, and from July 10 through July 14, 1995 (Figure 1). Sites located at or below the 1,000 foot contour in the Tallapoosa system and the 1,020 foot contour in the Beach Creek system were included in the study. Phase IIa was the first of two stages of investigation. The scope of work called for the relocation of all 109 archaeological sites within the project area that were recommended potentially eligible for the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) by Southeastern Archeological Services, Inc. (Gresham 1990) and conducting an intensive shovel testing program at those locations. One other site, 9HR287, was discovered during the testing of the other 109 sites. Thirty of the 110 (27.3 percent) archaeological sites could not be accessed due to a lack of permission from the property owner or could not be relocated from the map and description provided in Gresham (1990:Appendix F) (Table 1). For the most part, access was denied because the properties in question are currently under cultivation. In these cases, the landowners suggested that investigations be conducted sometime between October and March. The primary goal of Phase IIa investigations was to determine whether each archaeological site warranted full-scale Phase II testing in order to make recommendations in terms of its NRHP eligibility status. The Phase II study was devised to be implemented in stages (Phase IIa and Phase IIb) because it was the opinion of Garrow & Associates, Inc., that the level of effort employed during an earlier Phase I study in the project area did not provide sufficient data to support the recommendations offered as a result of that project (Gresham 1990). Although the results presented in this Management Summary are subject to revision based on the final results of our analyses, significant changes in our recommendations are not anticipated. These findings suggest that the decision to conduct Phase II investigations in two stages was justified. Thirty-two (29.1 percent) of the sites recommended by Gresham (1990) as potentially eligible for the NRHP and for full-scale Phase II testing are recommended ineligible for the NRHP based on the Phase IIa results. If the Georgia State Historic Preservation Office (GASHPO) concurs with our recommendations, further cultural resource investigations at these locations will not be necessary. This considerably reduces the overall cost of the Phase II project and the time it will take to complete. Additionally, site size estimations by Gresham (1990) were, in some cases, underestimated by orders of magnitude (Table 2). This situation, if undetected, would have created significant problems. The cost and time to complete the project in a manner that would satisfy all permitting requirements would have been greatly underestimated.