While recently surveying the site of a Native American home site in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest in Stephens County, surveyors found evidence of another home that was 200 years older. Upon further research, they dated the older home to 1355 A.D., which means humans were at that location during a time period the region was thought to be unoccupied.
Archaeologists with the U.S. Forest Service, consulting firm Southern Research, Historic Preservation Consultants, Inc. and the University of Georgia have been working at the archaeological sites since 2014. Since that time, the archaeologists have been uncovering a farmstead believed to have been occupied by the Cherokee.
"We figured out it was a house that was occupied around 1600, probably by ancestors of the Cherokee," said James Wettstaed with the Chattahoochee Oconee National Forests on WDUN's Afternoon News Wrap Thursday. "This past excavation we found evidence of another fire pit, which is unusual."
Radiocarbon dating indicated the second home and hearth was actually 200 years older than the other house.
"It's a time period we thought this area was completely abandoned. It's going to completely re-write our understanding of this area in that 1400 to 1600 A.D. time period," said Wettstaed.
Wettstaed said the burned house was 20 feet in diameter, square with rounded corners and had a conical roof. The home was supported by uprights posts and had thatch walls covered in mud. He said they had thought the home was in a chiefdom, with villages.
Also located at the site, several thousand pieces of pottery and pieces of stone leftover for tool making, like arrow points, hammers and scrapers.
In the future, surveyors will begin to separate the two homes from each other and learn more about the area.
Wettstaed also wanted to remind people that while archaeology is very interesting, it's illegal to collect artifacts off public land and encourages those interested to sign up for a volunteer program, like their Passport in Time program.
