Archaeological Testing for the Proposed US 80 Widening GDOT Project STP-005-3(20) Laurens County, Georgia

This report presents the results of archaeological testing by Southern Research Historical Preservation Consultants, Inc. for the Georgia Department of Transportation's proposed widening of U.S. 80 I SR 19 in Laurens County. The project area (Figure 1-1) is roughly 2 km west of Dublin and consists of a corridor approximately 680 min length and paralleling SR 191US 80 extending from CR 3991Airport Road at the west end, to roughly 200m east of Sandy Ford Branch at its eastern terminus. The project corridor encompasses both sides of US 80 I SR 19 and has been heavily altered by both road construction and industrial development.

An archeological field crew from the Georgia Department of Transportation located archaeological deposits within this area on December 8 - 21, 1999. The DOT archaeologists had roughly delineated a concentration of artifacts and had begun a 1 x2 m test unit. Southern Research was then contracted to complete the testing. We began fieldwork on January 24 and completed it on February 4, 2000. Our goals were to delineate the site boundaries within the project corridor and determine their eligibility for the NRHP. We delineated two prehistoric sites and one historic site and recommended all three as eligible for inclusion in the NRHP.

Field Methods

Fieldwork was conducted by a five person crew consisting of Virginia Pierce, Leslie Cooper, Bryan Tucker, Chris LeBlanc and field director George Price. The testing strategy included excavation of a grid of 90 shovel tests at 10 m intervals and excavation of 1 x2 m test units. The shovel tests were 30 x 30 em in size and were excavated to sterile subsoil in most cases. In a few instances we could not dig deep enough to reach sterile subsoil. Maximum shovel test depth was 130 cm. Recovered artifacts were bagged and labeled according to the appropriate provenience. Additional information, including artifact depth and soil descriptions, was recorded along with a shovel test record that was maintained for the duration of the project. Five test units were excavated in 10 em arbitrary level to culturally sterile subsoil. Two wall profile drawings with soil descriptions and one wall profile photograph were made of each test unit. All soil was screened through 114 inch hardware cloth. A two liter soil sample was taken from each level of every test unit.

Laboratory Methods

The artifacts were returned to the Southern Research laboratory in Columbus, Georgia where they were cleaned, analyzed and prepared for permanent curation. Analysis of the lithic artifacts followed the mass analysis procedures outlined by Ahler (1989) which focuses on size distribution and flake shape information generated from a size graded flake sample. In contrast to the more widely used individual flake analysis, mass analysis is cle~rly more objective, replicable and efficient with large flake samples. It involves size grading all debitage through five nested screens having 1.5, 1.0, 0.5, 0.25 and 0.125 inch hardware cloth. Two variables, count and total weight, were recorded. Prior to this procedure all tools and projectile points were removed from the samples. Artifact data was entered into a computer spreadsheet which was then used to produce inventory and summary tables. Aboriginal pottery was sorted into descriptive categories based on surface decorations and tempering agents. Sherds that were too small to be identified were typed as residual. Geomorphologist, Dr. David Leigh, was consulted to assess the archaeological potential of the soil-geomorphological settings within the project corridor. His methods included an examination of the archaeological test units, use of a bucket auger to obtain subsurface samples, and pedestrian reconnaissance of the entire project corridor. His findings are mentioned within the site descriptions and are presented in their entirety in Appendix I.