Data Recovery at the Palmetto Creek Sites: 9HS327, 9HS328, 9HS329 Harris County, Georgia

Greenhorne & O'Mara, Inc. under contract with the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT), hired Southern Research, Historic Preservation Consultants, Inc. to conducted Phase III data recovery excavations at the site of a bridge replacement and road straightening project along State Highway u6, east of Hamilton, Georgia. The excavation, which ran from 7 February 2006 to 28 April 2006, investigated three multicomponent archaeological sites in the floodplain of Palmetto Creek in order to allow Greenhorne-O'Mara Inc. and GDOT to completely comply with all applicable statutes of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), Section io6. Test Unit excavations removed 6i cubic meters of the three sites, and recovered 848 kilograms of cultural material, the majority of which was quartz debitage. As well, David Leigh of the University of Georgia conducted an extensive investigation of the geomorphology of the project area. The three sites, while multicomponent, were deposited on a fairly stable landform, so that, over the course of the io,ooo year history of the site, there was little to no accumulation of soil. This fact, along with the apparently disturbed nature of the artifact stratigraphy, prevents assignation of dates to any archaeological contexts. While a number of diagnostic artifacts and elements were encountered, none could be tied to the large amount of non-diagnostic lithic and ceramic materials at the sites. All artifacts, notes, and this report will be curated at the Antonio J. Waring Laboratory of Archaeology, University of West Georgia. Carrolton, Georgia.