A Cultural Resources Survey of the High Head Branch Watershed, Burke County, Georgia

A Cultural Resources Survey was conducted for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, by Garrow & Associates, Inc., within a 250 acre tract of the High Head Branch watershed in eastern Burke County, Georgia. The purpose of the study was to determine what historic and prehistoric archaeological resources are present within the study area, and to provide a preliminary assessment of these in terms of current National Register criteria. A secondary goal of the investigations was to test the hypothesis that drainages like High Head Branch formed natural accessways between the chert quarries located on Brier Creek and the Savannah River valley during prehistory. During the literature and records search it was determined that no previously recorded archaeological or historical sites were located within the project area. Only one previously recorded site is found on the 1964 Alexander, Georgia U. S. G. S. quadrangle map. This is the Theriault site, a stratified, multi-component quarry site located on Brier Creek, four miles south of the project area. Field investigations documented twelve (12) previously unrecorded prehistoric archaeological sites, as well as seven (7) prehistoric isolated artifact finds. The majority of the sites are located in uplands on the edge of steep hillsides flanking High Head Branch. The more intensely occupied sites cluster in close proximity to the High Head natural feature, in the southern portion of the tract. From the assemblages recovered, it appears that the High Head bluff vicinity was repeatedly used as a campsite and primary reduction stage workshop by aboriginals returning from chert quarries on Brier Creek during the Late Archaic to the Mississippian period. This finding confirms the research hypothesis that drainages like High Head Branch formed natural accessways between the Savannah valley and Brier Creek. Further testing to determine National Register significance status is recommended for three of the twelve sites documented: FN-5, FN-8, and FN-12. Sites FN-5 and FN-8 are actually two concentrated loci of one large site, but are separated by the project area boundary. Each of these three sites contain cultural materials to depths of 1 meter or more. The majority of the assemblage from each site consists of lithic material, especially heat altered thinning flakes, as well as small amounts of ceramics. Further archaeological research at these sites could potentially produce significant information concerning Late Archaic and Early Woodland settlement patterns, as well as yielding further data on prehistoric lithic resource procurement strategies in the central Savannah River Valley. No further archaeological investigations are recommended for the nine other documented prehistoric sites, nor for the seven isolated finds.