The Newton County Board of Education wishes to construct a new high school on about 107 acres of wooded land in eastern Newton County (Figure 1). As designed in June, 2019, the project would require impacting 0.44 ac of wetlands for the entrance road into the property. The school system was aware of an abandoned cemetery on the property and had Southeastern Archeological Services investigate and delineate the cemetery so that it could be entirely avoided by any activities related to the construction of the school. The report of this delineation (Gresham 2019) was submitted to the Corps of Engineers and in their response dated June 11, 2019, they requested that a Phase I cultural resources survey be conducted over the entire 107-acre tract. Southeastern Archeological Services (SAS) conducted archival research, a search of the Georgia Archaeological Site File and comprehensive Phase I archaeological survey from June 13 through June 25, 2019. Because Newton County was not aware of the need to conduct the cultural resources survey they were well into the process of initiating the project by first having a contractor remove timber from the property. For the sake of expediting the proposed schedule, we submitted a management summary to the consulting architects in the hope that the Corps of Engineers would concur with the management summary recommendations, and not have to wait on a full report that would take several weeks to prepare. In July, 2019 the Newton County Board of Education and their consulting architects decided to redesign the project to not affect any wetlands, and thus obviate the need for a Corps of Engineers permit, and the requested archaeological survey report. SAS was issued a stopwork order. The present document is a slightly modified version of the July 2, 2019 management summary. In this current version, we present the data recovered (site maps, full artifact inventory, site descriptions, draft site forms), our recommendations on the National Register eligibility of the resources encountered, and our assessments of project effects on the cultural resources. We submitted the site forms and now use official Georgia archaeological site numbers.
Help us to continue to make advances in research, stewardship, and bringing the past to life. No matter the size of the gift, your contribution will directly support groundbreaking archaeological research through sustaining student and outreach programs, and technological innovations. To make a secure gift online to the Archaeology Lab Fund, CLICK HERE.