66 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1959 
Harold A. Huscher carried on a series of excavations in four sites 
on the axis of the Columbia Dam 214 miles below Columbia, Ala. 
The area is one of extensive sandy bottoms and, with minor varia- 
tions, the sites produce Weeden Island pottery types in the surface 
levels and to a depth of about 2 feet. There is also a scattering of 
Stallings Island potsherds, steatite fragments, and large heavy- 
stemmed projectile points down to about 414 feet below the surface. 
Some of the flint flakes and points from the deeper levels have been 
completely altered chemically to a chalky residue. Similar points 
were found previously on the Macon plateau by Dr. A. R. Kelley 
and were described by him in Anthropological Paper No. 1, which 
appeared in Bulletin 119 of the Bureau. Mr. Huscher made maps 
and detailed excavation plans for these sites. 
Construction work was underway on the Walter F. George Dam 
in early February and Mr. Huscher made a series of 10- by 10-foot 
test. excavations in three sites which were threatened with immedi- 
ate damage. One of them at the Georgia end of the dam axis yielded 
a variety of trade goods, including the mechanism of a flintlock. 
The site probably represents the location of a Creek village of about 
A.D, 1800. Another site on the Georgia side, a short distance above 
the dam, and one on the Alabama end of the dam axis, produced 
plain Early Mississippian pottery. The material from the Alabama 
site indicated pottery with angled-loop handles similar to the ware 
that has been called Bibb Plain. The pottery from the Georgia 
site had flat strap handles with vertical incised decoration. The 
pottery characteristics are so definite that it is possible to correlate 
the wares with those from other sites in the general area. 
Mr. Huscher later moved upstream and began the investigation of 
two sites on the Fort Benning Military Reservation. One of them 
on the Georgia side is an Early Lamar site and seems to contain a 
single “pure” component. The site had been destroyed to a large 
extent by Army bulldozers building a road, but trenches in two 
separate remnants revealed post-hole patterns that apparently rep- 
resented two rectangular houses. A nearby midden area yielded a 
good representative sample of pottery types associated with the 
houses. The second site was on the Alabama side of the river just 
north of Uchee Creek. It is a Swift Creek-Weeden Island site and 
has an older underlying level. Sgt. David W. Chase, curator of the 
Infantry Museum at Fort Benning, Ga., had done some work there, 
and because of the evidence he had obtained, indicating that it would 
be a type site for the Swift Creek-Weeden Island phase of Middle 
Woodland in the area, it was extensively tested by the Huscher party. 
Beneath the Middle Woodland levels in a portion of the site there is 
a bed of white sand which has yielded fiber-tempered potsherds of 
