A Preliminary Report an Archaeological Reconnaissance: Greene, Morgan, Putnam

During the months April through September, 1973, an archaeological survey of portions of Greene, Morgan, and Putnam counties, Georgia was undertaken by the Laboratory of Archaeology at the University of Georgia in fulfillment of a contract between the university and the Department of Natural Resources, Division of Historic Preservation. Dr. Joseph R. Caldwell, Professor of Anthropology, was the principle investigator of the project and directed all operations. Actual fieldwork was undertaken by W. Dean Wood and Chung Ho Lee, graduate students at the university. The purpose of the survey was to locate as many archaeological sites as possible and evaluate their importance and potential to the prehistory of the area. Major attention was paid to the basin of the proposed Lake Wallace, a Georgia -rover company reservoir. When completed the Laurens Shoals Project will Impound the waters of the Oconee and Apalachee Rivers from Lake Sinclair to a point 10 miles north of Greensboro, Georgia. A brief discussion of the physiography of the area is in order here. The three counties are drained almost exclusively by the Oconee River and it tributaries (the northeastern section of Greene County is drained by tributaries of the Savannah River). The topography varies from undulating to greatly rolling, rolling and hilly, the result of an old peneplain being eroded by a dendritic drainage system (Long, et. al. 1922). All three counties lie within the Piedmont Plateau; the extreme southerly portion of Putnam County being only 15 miles from the fall line. The soils of the area are primarily of the sandy loam type with some minor clay loam types also present (Ibid.). A granite belt passes through central Putnam county and southerly Greene County creating shoals wherever the rivers or streams intersect it (Furcron 1969). A series of shoals known as "Big Shoals" extends from Lake Sinclair upriver approximately 10 miles. Prior to our survey there had been three independent surveys in the area. The most recent was conducted by Archie Smith in fulfillment of a contract with the National Park Service. Mr. Smith investigated the proposed basin of the Wallace Reservoir (Smith 1974). Dr. A. R. Kelly and Dr. Vincenzo Petrullo conducted surveys in the 1950's in order to shed new light on the Rock Eagle Effigy Mound and similar structures (Kelly, personal communication). No detailed reports resulted from those surveys, however, the artifacts and some notes do exist. Mr. Marshall (Woody) Williams of Madison, Georgia, has made available to us the results of his work in Morgan County and Mr. Williams is not a "pot hunter", but rather an amateur archaeologist in the truest sense of the word. Figure 1 relates the number of sites that were recorded prior to our survey and the number of sites currently recorded by the Laboratory of Archaeology.