Posted on 06/22/2002 2:01:45 AM PDT by blam
Old Indian grounds discovered near site of proposed park
COOLEEMEE, N.C. (AP) -- Looters searching for stone tools and spearheads near a proposed scenic park site have turned up one of the oldest American Indian archaeological sites in North Carolina.
Though locals had been finding arrowheads near the site for years, no one knew that there had been an ancient settlement there, said Ken Sales, the chairman of the River Park Task Force, which is planning the park near Cooleemee Falls.
Over the past two months, archaeologists at Wake Forest University surveyed 30 acres of parkland, screening soil at about 80 test sites.
The artifacts found -- rock flakes and stone tools -- date back some 10,000 years around the time the first American Indians migrated to North Carolina, said Matt Bosworth, a field technician with Wake Forest University's Archaeology Laboratories.
"We can't say whether there was a village there. We know there was occupation," he said.
But the Indians who left signs of their existence near Cooleemee weren't part of known tribes, Bosworth said.
"It was so many thousands of years ago, it was before the Native American tribes we know today," he said.
The American Indians who occupied Cooleemee were likely hunters and foragers, surviving on a diet of seeds, nuts, fruits and small mammals, archaeologists say. On occasion, they would have eaten large game.
Sales said that the looting at the site, although destructive, turned out to be a "blessing in disguise."
"Had that not happened, we would never know that site was there. ... To see the effort that went into the manual digging, I said, 'These guys have to be finding something,"' he said.
Archaeologists have started analyzing the artifacts in a lab and will prepare a report on their findings, which will be given to the River Park Task Force and to state preservation officials, Sales said.
The report should be finished in early July, Sales said. Park organizers had planned to begin the first phase of the park this summer, which would have meant grading some of the land and beginning work on a parking lot and trails.
Those plans have been put on hold. The task force also had received state grants to help build the park. Those grants have been extended for a year.
"Now we're in a holding pattern," Sales said. "We don't want to put a parking lot where a village used to be."
Talking about looters. Finding it on the surface in a field is fine. Digging below the surface to find relics is looting.
I believe the early inhabitants used these bluff to flee the flooding of the Mississippi River in ancient times.
About the same time dragging a couple dead branches back to your campfire in a National Forest caused the FBI and BATF to fire up the black helicopters.
Hunting camps with good view of game.
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