Archaeological Excavations at the Margaret Ann Bell Site 9MG694

The Margaret Ann Bell site (9MG694) has been under Lake Oconee in northern Georgia now for 34 years as we write this brief account of the 1977 archaeological excavations at the site. The reasons for the delay in the writing of this site report are several. Before detailing these, however, some context must be provided. The site described here was immediately west of the Joe Bell site, 9Mg28. That site was first located in 1968 and received major archaeological excavations during the summer of 1977 prior to its destruction. All of the work there was presented in the dissertation of the senior author (Williams 1983). In brief, it was determined that the Joe Bell site was the probable location of Busk ceremonial festivals during the early historic period of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

The excavations at the Joe Bell site were an integral part of the archaeological program conducted by the University of Georgia, Department of Anthropology prior to the creation of Lake Oconee on 17,000 acres of land in four counties in northern Georgia. As part of the agreement between the University and the Georgia Power Company, who funded the work and built the dam, a list of some 30 sites was developed that were to receive major archaeological excavations. This I ist was based upon choosing sites of many time periods and upon the best a priori estimates of which sites would yield the most interesting and useful information. Clearly not all of the thousands of sites in the reservoir could have been completely excavated.

The Joe Bell site was included on that magic list of30 sites to receive extensive excavation and the field work there was directed by the senior author. The work in the summer of 1977 was also conducted part of the University's summer archaeological field school. Indeed, there were two sites to be investigated that summer by the field school, the Joe Bell site and the Sword's Bridge site (9Mg73) some 3.2 kilometers to the north. The latter excavation was led by archaeologists Dean and Kay Wood. A report on those excavations was finally completed in 2009 by archaeologist Richard Moss as his University of Georgia Master’s thesis (Moss 2009).