Under a continuing services contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Savannah District (COE), Panamerican Consultants, Inc. conducted an intensive cultural resources survey of 3,338.7 ha (8,250 a.) of proposed timber harvest lands owned or managed by the COE along upper Thurmond Lake (formerly Clarks Hill Reservoir) in Elbert, Lincoln, and Wilkes Counties, Georgia. This lower Piedmont locality is part of the upper Savannah River Basin and includes the mouths of a number of significant perennial tributaries, including the Broad River, Coody Creek, Newford Creek, Pistol Creek, and Murry Creek. The principal result of these investigations was the documentation of 446 newly recorded archaeological sites and the revisitation and documentation of 12 previously recorded sites. Sixty-one sites within this suite are recommended as potentially eligible for NRHP nomination, one site's status is unknown because it is submerged, and the remaining 396 sites and isolated finds are recommended as ineligible. A continuous sequence of components was documented spanning virtually the entire record of human occupation in the Savannah Basin, from Late Paleomdian Dalton to the abandonment of the study area in the 1950s. The study generated an impressive prehistoric assemblage containing over 5,300 artifacts, including 132 typed projectiles, several soapstone and ceremonial artifacts, and numerous ceramics, in addition to over 1,900 historic artifacts.
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