When John W. Griffin, formerly chief of the Southeast Archaeological Center, agreed to undertake the project, it was hoped that a surface survey could be made of the proposed route east of the Ocmulgee River, the proposed alternate routes west of the river, and the areas where borrow pits for fill dirt would probably be located. Unfortunately, due to limitations of time and manpower, this could not be done. For this reason, the report is limited primarily to sites which were located and surveyed (and, in a number of instances, excavated) during the Smithsonian National Park Service archaeological investigations at Macon in the 1930s. However, seven of the twenty-seven sites included in the report have been located within the construction of Interstate 16. (As most of these were found by amateur archaeologists, it should be noted that the author has visited all of the latter sites and studied the artifacts recovered from them.) Despite the fact that the report is more limited than originally planned, it does indicate aboriginal occupation of much of the Macon area throughout the 12,000 year period of American Indian History and prehistory.
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