12 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



Harold A. Huscher carried on a series of excavations in four sites 

 on the axis of the Columbia Dam 2^/^ 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 41/^ 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 fomid previously on the Macon plateau by Dr. A. E. Kelley 

 and were described by him in Anthropological Paper No. 1, w^hich 

 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 Eeservation. 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 



