Addendum to Archaeological Survey of the Valdosta to Moultrie Portion of SR 133, Brooks and Colquitt Counties, Georgia

The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) wishes to improve the portion of State Route (SR) 133 from northwest of Valdosta to the outskirts of Moultrie, in Brooks and Colquitt Counties (Figure 1), a distance of 34.23 miles (55.1 km). The GDOT wishes to enlarge this existing two-lane highway (with an occasional third passing lane) into a four-lane, divided highway and Wolverton and Associates was selected to design the improvements. One aspect of the planning and design process, required by Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, is to locate archeological sites in the proposed area of potential effect, assess each site's significance in terms of its eligibility for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places and finally assess project effects to those sites determined eligible to the National Register of Historic Places. Section 106 is applicable because the project is a Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) undertaking that could affect cultural resources. The GDOT selected a team head d by Wolverton & Associates of Atlanta to conduct necessary studies and design the proposed improvements. After study of various alternatives (including bypasses and asymmetrical widening), a preferred alignment, entirely along the existing highway, was identified and delineated by project engineers in 2004. As part of the design/study team, Southeastern Archeological Services, Inc. (SAS) conducted a Phase I archeological survey of the proposed area of potential effect for the preferred alternative of the widening of the 34.23 miles of existing two-lane SR 133 in 2005 (Gresham 2005). The goals of this survey were to locate all archeological resources (sites~d artifact occurrences) in the area of potential effect, assess the significance of the portions f these sites that lie within the area of potential effect and to assess project effects to any sites deemed significant (eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places).This survey too place from February to March of2005, with the final report submitted in June of 2005.