Addendum: Archaeological Survey and Phase II Testing for Proposed Improvements to SR 515/US 76 from Blairsville to Young Harris, Union and Towns Counties, Georgia

The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) wishes to improve about 9.0 miles (14.5 km) SR 515/U.S. Highway 76 from the east side of Blairsville in Union County to the north side of Young Harris in Towns County (Figures 1 and 2) in order to improve safety and traffic flow. The GDOT retained the engineering and planning firm of HNTB Corporation to plan and design the project, which has been assigned GDOT Project Number ADP00-0056-02(029) and P.I. Number 122900. HNTB Corporation contracted with Southeastern Archeological Services, Inc. (SAS) to conduct the necessary archeological studies to ensure compliance with state and federal regulations.

The prime regulatory statute is Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended. This act requires that federal agencies, in this case the Federal Highway Administration, take into account direct and indirect effects of the undertaking on significant cultural resources, those that are listed or eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). To locate and evaluate one type of such cultural resources, archeological sites, SAS conducted a Phase I archeological survey of the project area in accordance with GDOT standards and guidelines, as spelled out in Chapter V. 3 of the 2011 version of their on-line Environmental Procedures Manual. The archeological survey took place from November 2011 through January 2012. After completion of the survey, and following consultation with GDOT, Phase II testing of seven sites was conducted from August through October 2012. A final report on the survey and site testing was produced by Ledbetter et al. (2013). Historic resources, such as standing houses, stores and districts, are described and evaluated in a separate report by HNTB (Weber 2012).

The Area of Potential Effect (APE) for the project was delineated by HNTB in 2011 to include all existing right-of-way, required new right-of-way and construction easements needed for cutting and filling and constructing intersections. In accordance with current GDOT guidelines, the project area, or the area to be archeologically surveyed, includes all area within the APE plus a 100-ft buffer on both sides of the APE. This larger area is termed the Expanded Survey Corridor (ESC).

Design plans continued to be refined and altered after submission and acceptance of the 2013 survey and testing report. The bulk of these changes were slight, and were confined to the surveyed ESC. In November 2016, revised design plans (dated November 11, 2016) had been completed, and these were compared to the area surveyed in the 2013 survey and testing report. Nine generally small or narrow areas were identified as falling outside of the previously surveyed ESC. These were the subject of the current addendum survey, which was conducted on November 17 and 18, 2016 by the author and SAS senior archeologist Ron Schoettmer, who was a principal field archeologist for the 2011-2012 original survey. The November 2016 survey of the nine areas was limited to the additional required right-of-way and easements that fell outside of the originally surveyed areas (Figure 3).

This addendum report presents the results of our survey of nine parcels of land that total about 1.5 ha (3.7 ac). We refer the reader to the 51-page Context section (Chapter 2) of the 2013 survey and testing report (Ledbetter et al. 2013) for information on the environmental setting, previous archeological investigations, cultural history, developmental history of SR 515, and the research design employed for the survey and testing project. We also refer the reader to the Methods section of that report (Chapter 3) for a full description of the methods employed and definitions used for the archival research, fieldwork, analysis and site evaluation, which is directly applicable to the present survey of additional parcels. We present in the next chapter the methods specific to this addendum survey.