Mitigation and Shoreline Stabilization of the Riverbank Portion of 9CE5, Fort Benning Military Reservation, Chattahoochee County, Georgia

As it was determined that the survey of the Fort Benning Training Area M6 could be completed without using the full allocated funding, it was decided to use the remaining funds to finance another archaeological project. The most urgent need was determined to be the eroding site 9CE5 (Engineer's Landing), which is considered to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), and threatened with ongoing destruction by said erosion. It was decided to mitigate the portions of the site most threatened by bank erosion from the Chattahoochee River and short-term protect the remaining portion of the site until a final plan for protection or mitigation could be carried out by the Army Corps of Engineers. To execute the first part of this plan, Panamerican Consultants, Inc. (PCI) excavated an 8 to 12 m wide section of the site adjacent to the bank from June to August 2005. This excavation was interrupted by massive flooding from Tropical Storm Cindy and Hurricane Dennis from the 8th of July to the 17th of July with another week required for the site to dry enough for the project to continue. The results of this project revealed no features or other significant remains of the small Bull Creek village that was excavated by David Chase and Harold Huscher in the 1950s. Only a modest number of pottery sherds and a few lithic artifacts, probably redeposited by erosion, were unearthed. Significant erosion of the riverbank apparently removed any substantial features before the year 2000 and left just a margin of refuse from the largely destroyed site. Chase and Huscher determined 9CE5 had been a small settlement occupied by the fifteenth or sixteenth century Indian inhabitants of the region. It was determined during this project that the phase represented at the site was the sixteenth century Stewart phase, a phase that represents the second half of the old Bull Creek phase. The Bull Creek phase was so subdivided by Frank Schnell in the 1980s. Furthermore, modest evidence of an Averett phase component at the site was noted. It is held to be extremely unlikely that significant features exist in the remaining portions of the site, making it probable that no permanent protection or full mitigation of the site is necessary.