A PATH THROUGH TIME: Arc would cross archaeological sites
Mike Toner - Staff
Monday, April 1, 2002

No matter where planners finally draw the route, the Northern Arc will cut a wide swath across 10,000 years of Georgia history.

The 59-mile-long, one-mile-wide corridor that now marks the general path of the $2.4 billion road --- through Bartow, Cherokee, Gwinnett and Forsyth counties --- slices through a landscape of human history that reaches from the Ice Age to Georgia's gold rush.

In all, more than 2,536 archaeological sites, ranging from the scattered flakes of Stone Age toolmakers to the ancient earthen pyramids of Etowah Mounds, are known in the four counties the road will traverse.

But it's not the sites they know about that worry Georgia archaeologists most. It's the ones they don't yet know.

When it comes to buried traces of bygone cultures, North Georgia is still uncharted territory. Experts say 90 percent of the region's archaeological sites may still lie beneath centuries of accumulated soil or forest growth, awaiting discovery or destruction.

"The Northern Arc crosses an area that we know is loaded with archaeological sites," says University of Georgia anthropologist Steve Kowalewski. "With the construction of that road, and the floodgate of urbanization that will follow, we may be looking at the loss of thousands of sites over the next few years."

Archaeological issue urgent

The Arc --- proposed to ease east-west travel across the northern metro area between I-75 and Ga. 316 --- has been studied since the mid-1980s. Now Gov. Roy Barnes is pushing hard to build it, making the archaeological issue more urgent.

Two new reports, conducted for the state Department of Transportation by two archaeological consulting firms, hint at some of the surprises that may be in store.

"Just about any place in North Georgia where you have major stream valleys, you have a high probability of archaeological sites," says Steve Webb, of R.S. Webb Associates of Holly Springs, the department's prime archaeological contractor on the project.

Webb and his staff have spent the last eight months checking out places where the highway is likely to cross waterways. The route crosses the Chattahoochee and Etowah rivers and 40 other streams and tributaries, some of them several times.

At the 67 locations they examined, they found 17 previously unknown archaeological sites, plus three cavelike rock shelters, five isolated artifacts and one cemetery.

Webb says at least eight of the new sites --- which include caches of prehistoric stone tools and ceramics, a Civil War trench and a late 19th century blast furnace --- may be significant enough to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

That survey, however, is only preliminary. If a final route is chosen, Webb's archaeologists will do a more systematic survey --- digging shovel-sized test holes every 90 feet across the 1,000-foot swath that will be disturbed by the road and its right of way.

The estimated 100,000 test pits they would dig, from one end of the road to the other, would be one of the most extensive surveys of archaeology ever in North Georgia.

The second study for the DOT offers a hint of what may be in store. Tom Whitley, senior archaeologist for Brockington and Associates of Norcross, has used a computer model to gauge the archaeological potential of the mixed ridges, hills, valleys and streams in the 26,000-acre planning area for the road.

Scientists know that people, whether they were prehistoric hunters or 19th century Cherokee farmers, tended to congregate in relatively flat areas where rivers and streams provided food and water.

Based on those patterns, Whitley says, 40 percent of the mile-wide highway corridor holds a "high probability" of having been occupied at some time in past 10,000 years.

Remnants of civilization

Archaeologists say numbers alone don't begin to reflect what is at stake.

North Georgia's temperate climate, rich soils and reliable water supply have made it a haven for humans since Ice Age hunters trickled into the area about 8,000 B.C., perhaps earlier.

As the hunters settled down, the area witnessed the dawn of agriculture --- extensively documented at a site, since developed, in Bartow County.

Following were the age of ceramics, the first use of copper and other metals and, more than 1,000 years ago, the rise of powerful chiefdoms, like those that marked their presence with earthen mounds scattered across the region.

The National Geographic Society has called the massive square pyramids at Etowah Mounds State Park, in Bartow County, one of the 10 most significant archaeological sites in the country. Dozens of other mound sites in Bartow and neighboring counties have been plowed into oblivion, used for road fill, or drowned by manmade reservoirs.

Hernando de Soto led his conquistadores through parts of Bartow County. Gen. William T. Sherman led the Army of the Cumberland through on the way to Atlanta --- stopping to marvel at Etowah's "remarkable Indian mounds" on the way.

Cherokee County was created out of the land vacated by the Cherokee Indians when they were removed to Oklahoma. The 1828 gold rush, which put Dahlonega on the map, also brought gold miners to Cherokee County. Scattered about the landscape, evidence of these past activities comes to light from time to time, constantly reshaping today's view of history.

"A lot of people think archaeologists know everything," says University of Georgia archaeologist Mark Williams. "The truth is that we're constantly being surprised by what we don't know --- and by what we're finding.

"We keep coming across these little industrial sites --- iron smelters and mills --- out in the woods that no one knew were there," he says. "Most people think of the South an industrial backwater on the eve of the Civil War, but these sites tell us otherwise."

Preservation values

Roads, in whatever age, are often built atop the remains of earlier cultures. Only in the last few decades have road builders been compelled to minimize the impact on an area's cultural heritage.

The National Historic Preservation Act requires that all planning for highways and other projects involving federal funding consider historic preservation values --- anything older than 50 years --- before the work begins.

The discovery of historic sites in the road's path, however, isn't likely to scuttle the project. Transportation planners can opt to reroute the road to avoid a site, or excavate it and preserve the artifacts and information it yields.

Excavation, especially in an area that has been inhabited repeatedly over thousands of years, can be costly and time-consuming.

A few years ago, when a federal wetlands permit survey turned up an archaeological site at the site of a planned Wal-Mart in Canton --- now less than a mile from the proposed route of the Northern Arc --- construction was delayed for several months.

The excavation eventually cost Wal-Mart more than $500,000. Over the course of the summerlong dig, archaeologists unearthed the remains of more than 40 Native Americans. It turned out to be the site of Hickory Log, a Cherokee village which had thrived along the banks of the Etowah River in the early 1800s.

The real surprise, however, was what lay beneath the Cherokee village. As they dug deeper, archaeologists found the remains of at least four earlier cultures that had occupied the same gentle rise along the Etowah River, dating back more than 5,000 years.

"They could fill a museum with what they dug out of that site," says Richard Warner, the archaeologist who reviews federal permits for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. "There could very easily be dozens and dozens of sites like that still undiscovered in these three counties."

Transportation officials say it's often more economical to move the road than to remove the artifacts and have them curated in perpetuity.

"As the stewards of Georgia's history, our first choice is always avoidance," says DOT Chief Archaeologist Eric Duff.

When the Harry Truman Parkway in Savannah threatened a prehistoric shell mound, for example, the road was shifted and the site was fenced to keep out looters.

When the interchange of I-675 and I-285 on the Southside of Atlanta threatened one of the last remaining sites on Soapstone Ridge, a complex of 5,000-year-old stone quarries that is considered one of the most important archaeological sites in the Southeast, the interchange was simply built around it.

But that's not always possible. When Ga. 88 in Jefferson County could not be rerouted to avoid the homestead of Georgia pioneer William Hannah, the site was excavated. It hasn't always been so. At the border between Georgia and Florida, I-75, built in an earlier time, slices through what was once a Spanish mission. The Georgia welcome center was built on top of the 400-year-old ruins.

History unmasked

These days, however, the road itself is not only an instrument of destruction, but a tool of discovery.

Archaeologists acknowledge that without the surveys required for roads, reservoirs, pipelines and transmission lines, most of the state's existing 35,000 archaeological sites would still be unknown.

Most of the archaeological sites in Bartow and Forsyth county, for instance, were identified during construction of Lake Alatoona and Lake Lanier. And most were eventually covered by the rising waters.

Government projects must take heed of such sites, but few constraints apply to developers who built subdivisions, shopping centers and industrial parks built on private land. Even though the freeways were rerouted at Soapstone Ridge, dozens of sites nearby were later destroyed by private development.

Archaeologists fear that a similar fate will befall many of the yet-undiscovered sites along the Northern Arc.

With or without the new road, the developed acreage in Forsyth, Cherokee and Bartow is expected to increase by 240,000 acres in the next 20 years --- almost doubling what exists there today.

Archaeologists fear that if the sprawl goes unchecked, uncounted archaeological sites on those lands --- about one-third of the entire tri-county land mass --- could vanish before they are ever discovered.

"If we build the road, people will come," says DNR's Warner. "If we don't build it, they will come anyway. And we have almost no way to protect archaeological resources on private land."