Lowe Site Report: A Contribution to Archaeology of the Georgia Coastal Plain

Bridges form one of the most important and tangible features of the highway transportation system. The combined road systems of Georgia accommodate over 14,500 bridges. While many of these span other roads and railways, most are used to traverse water courses such as rivers, creeks, marshes, swamps, lakes, and intertidal waterways. Bridges are designed and constructed to have a functional life span of fifty years before extensive maintenance, widening, or replacement is required. Of course many structures far outlive this expectation. Because of the finite life span of bridges and the need for them to accommodate the roads of which they are an integral part, the Georgia Department of Transportation has a continuing program of bridge evaluation, maintenance, widening and replacement. In any one year the Department conducts environmental evaluations of approximately 150 proposed bridge projects with some 100 projects being let to construction annually. This extensive bridge program is extremely important in the environmental process due to the potential effects these projects might have on natural as well as cultural resources. In fact, a bridge by itself might qualify as an historically significant resource (e.g. covered structures, truss bridges, concrete arch facilities, etc.) or be closely related to others (e.g. mill sites, depots, etc.). Bridge replacements might also affect ecologically significant features such as wetlands, water quality and water dependent wildlife. Because of the natural setting of most bridges (i.e. spanning rivers and creeks), many projects affect what would be considered high site probability areas for archaeology. Put another way, bridges span stream in locations which were also highly favored for prehistoric occupation (i.e., elevated areas adjacent to water courses). For this reason, the Department conducts archaeological surveys of all proposed bridge projects with a site location ratio of about five to ten percent. The present study concerns the excavation of one site of four discovered during environmental surveys for the Jacksonville Ferry bridge replacement project over the Ocmulgee River in Coffee and Telfair Counties. Departmental testing of the Love site was conducted with the aid of personnel from the preconstruction and surveying sections of the GDOT district office in Tifton (particularly Randall Carr and Don Gaskins) and Jimmy Rodgers, a volunteer and amateur archaeologist from Fayetteville. The Department is pleased to publish Dr. Crook's report of the Love site as the third in its Occasional Papers in Cultural Resource Management series.