Phase III Archaeological Data Recovery at the Horseshoe Bend Site (9GE552) in the Reynolds Lake Oconee Development

This report describes Phase III Data Recovery investigations at Site 9GE552, a Late Mississippian Lamar period (c. AD 1350-1650) farmstead. Reynolds Lake Oconee, formerly known as Reynolds Plantation, is a residential development in Greene and Putnam Counties, Georgia, situated on Lake Oconee. The property is managed by Oconee Land Development Company, LLC, and features multiple golf courses, private homes, vacation rentals, and lakefront amenities. Several large-scale cultural resource surveys have been undertaken at Reynolds Lake Oconee as part of the permitting process for Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, through the US Army Corps of Engineers, Savannah District (USACE). This compliance work, undertaken so that Reynolds Lake Oconee could develop the property in accordance with their Master Plan, resulted in the recordation of prehistoric and historic archaeological sites throughout the property. Continuing development necessitates careful management of these cultural resources.

To facilitate this management, a Programmatic Agreement (PA) was developed in 1998 between the USACE, the Georgia State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (Council) (Appendix E). A tract currently planned for development contains 9GE552 (Figures 1.1 and 1.2), a multicomponent site identified in 1997 by Southeastern Archaeological Services, Inc. (SAS) (Ledbetter 1998). SAS completed Phase II testing investigations at 9GE552 and recommended the site eligible for the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) (Ledbetter et al. 2014). Current plans for the Horseshoe Bend Tract anticipate that the entire site will be adversely impacted by the proposed development.

Under Section 8.b.7 of the PA, if a potentially eligible site is determined to be eligible for the NRHP, and if that site will be adversely affected, a mitigation plan will be developed to compensate for those adverse effects. In 2017, Brockington prepared a Phase III mitigation/treatment plan which detailed the proposed Phase III archaeological data recovery at the NRHP significant area of 9GE552 (Butler 2017). The mitigation plan was accepted by the Savanah District USACE on November 9, 2017. Fieldwork was conducted from November 11, 2017 to January 12, 2018. Mr. Scott Butler served as both the Field Director and the Principal Investigator responsible for all aspects of the project. The field crew consisted of Mr. James Page, Mr. John O’Donnell, and Ms. Dana McCammon. The Lab Supervisor was Ms. Meagan Brady, and Ms. Bronwen Morgan conducted the laboratory analysis. Ms. Brady also completed the report editing, and Mr. Michael Walsh produced the report.

Chapter 2 is an environmental and cultural context overview, and Chapter 3 presents the field and laboratory methods. A discussion of previous archaeological site investigations is presented in Chapter 4; Chapter 5 describes the recovered artifacts and material culture. Chapter 6 addresses the research questions, and Chapter 7 is the site summary and conclusions. The Artifact Catalog is included as Appendix A. Appendix B contains the ethnobotanical analyses and Appendix C contains the radiocarbon results. The resume of the Principal Investigator is included as Appendix D. Appendix E presents the 1998 PA between the USACE, SHPO, and the Council.