An Inventory of Gordon Willey’s WPA Era Collection From the Arthur Tarver Site Jones County, Georgia

The Park Service collection from the Arthur Tarver site, presently curated at Ocmulgee National Monument, was examined by Chad O. Braley and Jerald Ledbetter of Southeastern Archeological Services, Inc., on October 6, 1992. The material was examined in order to obtain comparative data for the 1992 excavations of a portion of the Tarver site. SAS is in the process of preparing a report of data recovery on a portion of the site which will be destroyed by construction of the Town Creek Reservoir. The collections were examined with the permission of the Park Service. Three bags of artifacts from the Arthur Tarver site (formerly identified as 1JOl) were inventoried. According to Sara L. Reynolds, museum technician with the Southeast Archeological Center in Tallahassee, Florida, the collections were made by Gordon Willey in 1939 or earlier. There is no surviving collection provenience data. The only contemporary reference to the collection is a 1942 letter from Charles N. Fairbanks to Mrs. S.P. Myrick which mentions the site. Because time available for examination was limited, the inventory was not highly detailed. Ceramics were grouped by temper and surface treatment. Ceramics were also sorted, as possible, according to established ceramic types. Chad Braley, who conducted the ceramic analysis, has extensive experience with historic Creek ceramics from the Chattahoochee River valley as well as other areas of the Southeast. The remainder of the Tarver site collection, which consisted of a small number of projectile points, ground stone tools and historic artifacts was typed and described by Jerald Ledbetter.