201 Facilities Report for Northern Cobb and Portions of Bartow, Cherokee, and Paulding Counties, for the Drainage Basins of Noonday, Rubes, and Southern Lake Allatoona

The following report, is a record of the preliminary surface reconnaissance for the Noonday-Rubes-Southern Lake Allatoona 201 Facilities Plan (Mayes, sudderth & Etheridge, Inc., Contract No. 9784). As an initial survey to up-date and compliment the archeological inventory, it is not a definitive work. However, it does not allow some interpretive information, for example: the prehistoric settlement pattern on the northern slope of the Kennesaw-Sweat Mountain-Lost Mountain highland. This highland area divides the Etowah River, to the north, from that of the Chattahoochee River to the south. Three ecotones are defined: the scarp zone, composed of the highland slopes and ridges; the shallow but protected cove areas formed by the entrenchments of the tributary creeks; and the river valley floodplains, alternately wide and narrow. The lacustrine zone, formed along the shore of Allatoona, is recent and is not considered in the report except where the fluctuating, water level has exposed additional sites since the 1946-49 Smithsonian River Basin Survey. Inventory or records-check of previously published or documented sites has been thoroughly presented elsewhere by Environmental Systems, Inc., and our work with those sites has been to pinpoint actual locations, when these were not well recorded, and to include them in the assessment in light of possible construction in the future. The goal of the Archeological Survey of Cobb-Fulton Counties is the intact preservation or conservation of all archeological and historic sites as a cultural/scientific resource base. At such time as recovery techniques and methodology allow for a greater information return, some sites must survive wherein the new methods may be applied. Presently, given the nation's economic and environmental crises, it would be unrealistic to attempt to preserve every site. A secondary goal, therefore, is to place the site inventory in order of priority of scientific-cultural-historical importance and insure the data are considered at the basic point of construction or route planning.