Recent Excavations of the Historic Creek Components at the Tarver (9JO6) and Little Tarver (9JO198) Sites, Macon, Georgia

Sixty years ago, archeologist Charles Fairbanks (1954, 1956) provided our first glimpse of early historic Creek material culture with the WPA era work at the Macon Plateau site, which includes the remnants of one of the towns that was occupied by the Creek Indians who were living in the Ocmulgee River Valley during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These excavations, which were later summarized in greater detail by Carol Mason (1963), firmly established the basic chronology for the period, known as the Ocmulgee Fields phase. The recovery of a great deal of European trade material from the Trading Post and associated Creek occupation areas provided an intriguing glimpse into early historic trade and interaction. In the years that have passed since the WPA excavations at Macon Plateau, our knowledge of early historic Creek culture has been considerably refined. However, most of these advancements have come from archeological investigations in areas to the west of the Ocmulgee River Valley, primarily by researchers working on Creek sites in Alabama and western Georgia (Knight 1985; Mistovich and Knight 1986; Waselkov et al. 1990). Until very recently, comparatively little work had been undertaken on historic Indian sites in the Ocmulgee Valley, and the broader spatial and temporal applicability of many of the recent developments in the archeology of the historic Creek Indians had yet to be tested. Recent excavations of the adjacent Tarver (9JO6) and Little Tarver (910198) sites constitute one the most intensive archeological investigations in the Ocmulgee River Valley since the WPA era work in the region. The Tarver sites occupy most of a broad ridge overlooking the confluence of Town Creek and the Ocmulgee River near present day Macon, Georgia, and only about 10 km to the northwest of Macon Plateau (Figure 1).