pip. n1)!'2^5Y' JO^IN H. KERR RESERVOIR BASIN — MILLER 



265 



OCCANEECHI COMPONENT 

 (44Ha5) 



Fifty feet east of the old caretaker's house on Occaneechi Island are 

 the remains of an old Indian village site. The cultural layer lies 

 under a foot of river-deposited silt and white man's debris. The first 

 inkling that a buried site existed here was when the adjoining garden 

 area was explored and a number of stone chips and very small sherd 

 fragments were seen there. Through the medium of 5-foot square 

 test pits we were able to roughly delimit the earlier occupational area. 

 We found material existing over an area about 75 feet in length, corre- 

 sponding to the main axis of the island, and around 48 feet in width. 

 The deposit itself varied in thickness from 3 to 9 inches depending 

 upon the distance from the center of the deposit. 



After the white man took over the island and built this house, a num- 

 ber of trash pits were dug which had penetrated through the earlier 

 deposits. Into these pits he deposited shattered glass bottles, crock- 

 ery fragments, bits of chinaware, metal objects of many sorts, as well 

 as some type of organic material which had decayed, leaving behind a 

 very dark soil. 



In making our test, we found chunks of bricks, bits of lime mortar, 

 fragments of chinaware, broken glass, bits of wire, numerous square- 

 cut nails, buttons, sawed animal bones — mostly of cow — and an occa- 

 sional Indian potsherd, all incorporated within the first 6 inches of the 

 top-soil. In the silt and sand below this we found a number of these 

 same objects but in diminishing numbers. 



While testing the site we were always able to determine the origin 

 of the pits dug by white men for they came very close to the present 

 surface, while those dug by the Indian were only found after the silt 

 and sand were removed. Those of Indian origin were not truly pits 

 but rather slight depressions in the surface upon which they lived. 



We found no evidence of any burials, house structures, or other 

 features pertaining to the Indian occupation. 



Because of this rather heavy overburden and the sparsity of infor- 

 mation gained through our testing, it was decided that it would be 

 wise not to dig the site. 



As the result of our testing we managed to recover 243 potsherds, 

 as well as a few crudely chipped stone artifacts. An examination of 

 these sherds allowed us to separate them into their various compo- 

 nents. These are shown in table 15. 



Table 15. — Occaneechi sherds separated into their various components 



