Archeological Investigations of the Mill Creek Site, Americus, Georgia

Archeological data recovery was conducted in the summer of 1988 at the Mill Creek Site (9Su6) located in the southwest portion of the City of Americus, Sumter County, Georgia. It is a large (estimated 18 ha) multicomponent, generally stratified site located on a sandy, Pleistocene terrace at the junction of Muckalee and Mill Creeks, tributaries of the Flint River. Data recovery consisted primarily of the excavation of 244 systematically placed shovel tests, 66 other shovel tests and 32 2 x 2 m test units in the southern, city-owned half of the site. The site contained lithic and ceramic artifacts spanning from the Early Archaic to historic Creek periods. Only four features and a very small amount of faunal and botanical material were encountered. The site is about 4 to 8 km from chert sources and was a locus of intermediary reduction, involving the heat treating and reduction of cores and preforms to tools, mostly projectile points. Most of the 65,644 artifacts from the test pits were restricted to the top 70 cm of soil, although some were found as deep as 120 cm below surface. Soil grain size analysis indicated that eolian deposition could have accounted for the stratification at the site, but it is more likely that extensive bioturbation caused artifacts to become roughly stratified. The primary occupations at Mill Creek date to the Late Archaic, Middle/Late Woodland and Early Mississippian periods. The Early Mississippian ceramic assemblage was intermediary in typological composition between predominantly cord-marked assemblages known for the Ocmulgee and Flint River basins and predominantly plain and incised assemblages known for the Chattahoochee basin. While this undoubtedly is a function of the interfluvial geographical location of the Mill Creek Site and probably reflects a straddling between two cultural traditions, more precise anthropological implications remain unclear.