Archaeological Investigations at the North End Site (9GN107), Little St. Simon's Island

Mapping and test excavations were conducted by this author as parts of two archaeological field schools at the North End site on Little St. Simons Island during the summers of 1990 and 1991. The general objectives of the investigation were to record the form and extent of this prehistoric site, and to recover detailed information regarding its archaeological content and formation characteristics. This information, it was hoped, could help resolve current questions regarding late prehistoric settlement and subsistence patterns ou the Georgia coast, or at least add data for continuing debate. Little St. Simons Island is a small Holocene island located near the middle of the Georgia coast northeast of St. Simon's Island, its Pleistocene counterpart (Figure 1). Sapelo Island is the next large barrier island to the north and Jekyll Island is the next to the south. The topography of Little St. Simons Island is dominated by north/south trending sand ridges aud sloughs, the remnants of former sand dune and beach systems which stabilized as the island formed and its shoreline accreted eastward. The old dune ridges now are vegetated by stands of cedars, pines, oaks, and magnolia with a typical palmetto shrub understory. The North End Site is located south of the Altamaha Sound on the western side of Little St. Simons Island. The site is bordered on the west by Sparai1a salt marsh dissected by small tidal creeks. The Atlantic Ocean and the island's dynamic beach strand now are located about 1.7 km to the east. There have been dramatic changes in the island's shoreline over time. The shoreline has accreted eastward more than 1km since it first was mapped in 1860 (see Griffin and Henry, 1984). The late prehistoric shoreline would have been much closer, perhaps within some 500 meters of N orth End Site, and the island also was much smaller at that time.