Archaeological Investigations at Causton's Bluff Chatham County, Georgia

The Causton's Bluff project' was designed to mitigate the impact of road and marina construction on a 75 acre tract of high ground north of President Street at its junction with the Wilmington River, Chatham County, Georgia. Initial survey had revealed the presence of multicomponent sites relating to over 4500 years of past human activity. The mitigation phase explored these sites in detail, recovering a wealth of information about aboriginal occupations on nonvillage, non-mound sites over time. The sites were probably of short duration since few aboriginal features were recovered during the mitigation phase. The historic components fall into two classes:,domestic and military. The domestic sites include an eroding mid-eighteenth century domestic site, a late eighteenth century site of undetermined use, an overseer's house, probably utilized as a Confederate headquarters, and a slave (later freeman's) village. The military structures included the walls of Fort Bartow, a hutting area and a free standing bombproof. Mitigation was accomplished in conjunction with earthmoving activities timed to completion of work on sites. Following excavation, the roadway was opened through one-half the projected right-of-way. This area was then swept with metal detectors to ensure more complete artifact and data recovery. This later operation proved especially useful in adding additional material from a wider area to the data collection from the sites.