The Baucom Hardaway Site (Peck and Painter)

all concerned in the salvage excavation of the site, the Baucom’s in particular. During these years of effort 33 squares were excavated from eight to ten feet below original ground level and almost 8,000 square feet of deposit was troweled and sometimes sifted (Map 4). A total of 182 projectile points of many types were recovered from the different levels along with thousands of other objects such as potsherds, tools, preforms, rejected bifaces, chips, spalls, cores, hammerstones etc. A most productive site indeed.

The position of artifacts in this excavation were not recorded by arbitrarily numbered or named levels, but by feet and inches below the site surface, although these measured levels may sometimes be referred to in the text as "the Hardaway level" etc., that is not the way they were recorded.

SITE STRATIGRAPHY

Two types of stratigraphy were noted in the excavations (Map 4, Stratification on 1 and 2 ) . This difference in stratigraphy is also shown in Figures 1 and 2 .

Stratification 1 (Map 4 and Figure 1 ) contained an ideal and predictable sequence of projectile point types and zones of alluvial deposition. These zones were interspersed with zones of humus that indicated long periods without flood deposits (Figure 1 ). The excavators knew at all times what zone they were in and just what cultural material to expect from that zone. The greater portion of the site (Map 4) is perhaps stratified in this ideal manner, as was the greater portion of the excavated area. Much remains to be discovered in the unexcavated areas containing Stratification Type 1.

Stratification 2 presents an entirely different picture from the 4’ 6" level to the surface (Figure 2) . This deep zone is an uninterrupted culturally sterile deposit of yellow sand. from the 4’ 6" level downward a bed of sandy yellow clay contains the same cultural sequences that were found in Stratification 1, but with one difference, the humus zone between the 7’ and 8’ level was entirely lacking.

This difference in stratigraphy can possibly be interpreted as follows: During the interval between the Hardaway Side-Notched and the Palmer occupations a flash flood occurred that scoured away the humus zone containing the Rocky River occupation. The direction of the line of demarcation between Stratification 1 and Stratification 2 indicates that the flash flood probably originated in a cloud burst in the valley or watershed of Mineral Spring Branch. After this occurrence it is possible that an uninterrupted sequence of cultural and alluvial deposits took place up to the Late Prehistoric or Early Historic Period. Another flash flood occurred, this one greater than the first for it scoured away everything down to the 4’ 6" level. Subsequent floods deposited yellow sand to build back up to normal surface level. This last flash flood, like the first one perhaps originated in the Mineral Spring Branch watershed.

If the se flash floods originated from the Rocky River watershed then the scouring action would have occurred as the Rocky River’s floodwater quickly back- filled the valley of Ninera1 Spring Branch before continuing downriver. In either

Previous page

Return Home:

9

Next Page