New Acquisitions

As the only national non-profit organization that acquires endangered archaeological sites, The Archaeological Conservancy has preserved more than 365 sites across the country. Below are some of the Conservancy's most recent projects.

Contentnea Creek (North Carolina)

The Contentnea Creek site on North Carolina’s Inner Coastal Plain has been periodically occupied by Native Americans for centuries. Archaeologists believe the Native Americans were drawn to the plant and animal resources located around nearby Contentnea Creek.

Artifact dating from approximately 8000 B.C. to the 18th century have been found there, with the most intensive use of the site occurring during the Late Woodland period. Nearly 3,000 features including human and dog burials, postmolds, hearths, and storage pits were recorded. A variety of ceramic types were also found at the site.

The wealth of information recovered from the Contentnea Creek site will provide researchers with a comparative database that will be useful for studying a variety of subjects such as human-dog relationships and radiocarbon dates for pottery types.

Culture & Time Period: 8000 B.C. to the 18th century

Status: Threatened by development

Acquisition: The Conservancy has optioned the property and has until October 10, 2007 to raise $250,000 to complete the purchase.

How you can help: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Contentnea Creek, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108.

Insley Mounds (Louisiana)

The Conservancy’s latest Southeast acquisition is the Insley Mounds site near the town of Delhi, in northeastern Louisiana. Insley was first visited in 1913 by C. B. Moore, the noted archaeologist who traveled the waterways of the Southeast visiting some of the region’s best-known mound sites. Located on the bank of Bayou Macon, Insley has been disturbed by years of cultivation, consequently it’s uncertain how many mounds were built there. But there are three confirmed mounds, and the Conservancy is acquiring all three in three separate puchases.

Culture & Time Period: Middle Archaic Period to Coles Creek Period (5000 B.C. - A.D. 1200)

Status: The mounds have been damaged by erosion and heavy equipment and are threatened by possible waterfront development.

Acquisition: The Conservancy needs to raise $12,000 to match the Lower Mississippi Valley challenge grant and purchase the site.

How you can help: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Insley Site Project, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108.

Spruce Hill (Ohio)

The Archeological Conservancy, working in conjunction with Wilderness East, a central Ohio land trust, and the Conservation Fund, a national environmental organization, has made an emergency acquisition of the Spruce Hill Earthwork near Chillicothe, Ohio. The acquisition prevented the rare earthwork from being sold at an estate auction, where interest from land developers and other parties was high.

The Spruce Hill Earthwork is a Hopewell period (ca. 100 B.C. to A.D. 500) hilltop enclosure encompassing about 140 acres. Its principal feature is a low stone and earthen wall with a stone gateway that circles the top of the hill. Hilltop enclosures are the characteristic Hopewell expression in southwestern Ohio, but the Spruce Hill earthwork is unique in that it’s located in the Paint Creek-Scioto River region of central Ohio.

Culture and Time Period: Hopewell (100 B.C. to A.D. 500)

Status: Saved from development by emergency acquisition.

Acquisition: The Archaeological Conservancy has an outstanding loan of $300,000 from the Conservation Fund. Money is needed to pay down our debt.

How you can help: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy. Attn: Spruce Hill, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517.

Spier 142 (New Mexico)

The El Morro Valley saw the rapid establishment of a number of communities during the mid-13th century when thousands of ancestral Puebloan farmers set up permanent residence in this area. It was during this time of transformation that large settlements such as the Conservancy’s latest New Mexico acquisition, known as Spier 142, and another nearby Conservancy preserve, Scribe S, were built in the valley.
           

The new site is considered to be one of the largest Pueblo III period communities in the valley. It was recorded as Site 142 in 1916 by Leslie Spier, an archaeologist with the American Museum of Natural History who worked in the area in the early 20th century. It’s estimated to have 165 masonry rooms in its main roomblock and an additional 195 rooms and a possible great kiva in adjacent areas. This well-preserved site is thought to have at least two and possibly three walled plaza areas.

Culture and Time Period: Proto-Zuni, A.D. 1250 to 1290

Status: Saved from possible development.

Acquisition: The Archaeological Conservancy has an option to purchase 160 acres of the site for $90,000 in a bargain sale to charity.

How you can help: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Spier 142, 5301 Central Avenue, NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517

Pamplin Pipe Factory (Virginia)

Just 10 miles east of Appomattox, where the Civil War ended, is the small, remote town of Pamplin, Virginia. It’s thought that pipe making was underway in Pamplin by the 1740s, shortly after the first settlers arrived, and it developed into a cottage industry. The pipes were made primarily by local women from the nearby deposits of red clay. They were fired in backyard, wood-burning ovens and were then packed in barrels and crates lined with pine needles or sawdust by local storeowners.  Pamplin pipes were shipped all over the United States.

Pamplin’s cottage industry paved the way for the establishment of a factory sometime before 1880 by E. H. Merrill, an Akron, Ohio company that was the leading producer of tobacco pipes in America in the 1850s. The Merrills invented a pipe-making machine, and it’s believed that eight to 10 of these machines were utilized at the Pamplin factory.

Culture and Time Period: 18-20th century.

Status: The site is threatened by possible commercial development.

Acquisition: The Archaeological Conservancy has an option to purchase the site for $77,500.

How you can help: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Pamplin Pipe Factory, 5301 Central Ave. NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517.

Gault (Texas)

Located along a creek in Central Texas near the eastern edge of the Edwards Plateau, the Gault site has yielded a dense concentration of artifacts indicating intermittent human occupation spanning more than 13,000 years.  Gault is one of the largest and most prolific Clovis sites in America and it has yielded considerable evidence that challenges the notion that Clovis was the first American culture.

Archaeologist Michael Collins has investigated the site since 1991, and he founded the non-profit Gault School of Archaeological Research to ensure future research at, and public interpretation of, the site. Early last year, Collins purchased a major portion of Gault and recently donated it to the Conservancy for permanent preservation.

Puzzle House (Colorado)

It can be hard to imagine that what are now mounds of sandstone rubble amidst plowed fields were once thriving prehistoric settlements. But these ruins are in fact what remain of the Puzzle House Archaeological Community. The Conservancy holds an option to purchase 154 acres containing the well-preserved ruins of this extensive community in southwest Colorado, which dates from A.D. 650 to 1250. There are several major pueblos, field houses, and other associated activity areas, and three to five prehistoric road segments connecting these outlying settlements with Lowry Pueblo’s monumental Great Kiva and Great House. Lowry Pueblo, a National Historic Landmark within the Bureau of Land Management’s Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, is considered by researchers to be one of the most significant archaeological resources in the Southwest.

Upper Leibhart (Pennsylvania)

First mapped by Europeans in 1670, the Upper Leibhart site is a Susquehannock village situated on a hilltop overlooking the Susquehanna River in southeast Pennsylvania. Occupied from 1650 to 1675, the site may have been home to as many as 1,200 people at its peak, and it is believed to be one of the last major villages inhabited by the Susquehannocks prior to their defeat by the Iroquois around 1675.
           

Various Native American artifacts as well as European items such as pottery, glass trade beads, gunflints, kaolin pipes, and gun parts were discovered at the site. In addition, a variety of Early and Middle Woodland period ceramics dating from 3,000 to 1,000 years ago have been found. One unique burial contained a complete Point Peninsula period (500 B.C. to A.D. 800) pottery vessel as well as a birdstone of banded slate, a cache of blades, and disc shell beads.  Consequently, in addition to the Susquehannock village, the site has tremendous research potential concerning earlier occupations.

Culture and Time Period: Susquehannock, Contact period A.D. 1650-1675

Status: The site is threatened by residential development.

Acquisition: The Conservancy needs to raise $100,000 by December 1, 2008.

How you can help: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Upper Leibhart, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517

Wancura-Johnson (Colorado)

The Conservancy has negotiated an option to purchase the Wancura-Johnson site, a Pueblo I and early Pueblo II village in southwest Colorado. The site was occupied during a time when the people in the heart of the Mesa Verde region were migrating to other areas, including Chaco Canyon. While these migrations were occurring, residents of Wancura-Johnson chose not to move from the region.
The site is unlike many others in southwestern Colorado. For example, other large sites, such as the Conservancy’s James A. Lancaster Preserve, were occupied for long periods of time and developed complex community interactions evidenced by the construction of large multi-story architectural units grouped near great house-like structures. The structures could include a number of ceremonial rooms and circular tower features. The earlier occupations were buried under later and larger ones.

Culture and Time Period: Pueblo I and early Pueblo II, A.D. 880-980

Status: The site is located in a rapidly developing rural residential area.

Acquisition: The Archaeological Conservancy has an option to purchase the site. The purchase price and the costs of developing management and public education programs is $121,000.

How you can help: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Wancura-Johnson, 5301 Central Ave. NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517.

Dorr 2 Mound (Ohio)

During the Middle Woodland period, Native American communities began constructing large earthworks in what is now a town named The Plains in southeastern Ohio’s Hocking Valley.  As its name suggests, The Plains, which is located a few miles northwest of Athens, is a relatively flat terrace in an area of hilly terrain.  Within The Plains is an archaeological district called The Wolf Plains, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

During the Late Adena period, the people of the Hocking Valley built more than 30 earthworks, including 22 conical mounds and nine circular enclosures, in The Wolf Plains. Most of the remaining earthworks in this complex are privately owned and could be destroyed as The Plains expands, therefore the Conservancy is trying to obtain sites as they become available. The Conservancy purchased one of those sites, the Dorr 2 Mound, using emergency POINT funds. 

Flaming Arrow (North Dakota)

Archaeologists have known about the Flaming Arrow site, which is located about 40 miles north of Bismarck on the east bank of the Missouri River, since the 1940s. A limited excavation took place there in 1983, and geophysical surveys in 1997 documented the subterranean features of the approximately three-acre site without disturbing the archaeological deposits.

Flaming Arrow, which dates to about A.D. 1100, is the Conservancy’s second preserve in North Dakota. Archaeologists classify it as an Initial Plains Village Tradition site, and it was inhabited by the ancestors of the historic period Mandan and Hidatsa nations. The Mandan and Hidatsa still reside along the Missouri River in central North Dakota, and are perhaps best known for their role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which spent the winter of 1804 and ‘05 in this area.

Ely Mound (Virginia)

The Ely Mound site is situated near Rose Hill, in Lee County, Virginia, and sits on a gentle slope near a small stream, with the Cumberland Mountain and Cumberland Gap National Historic Park appearing as a dramatic backdrop to the northwest. The Ely Mound is one of only two remaining examples of a Mississippian platform mound that remains standing in the state of Virginia.
           

Dating to the Mississippian Period (A.D. 1100 to 1500), this rare and important site was tested in the 1870s by Lucien Carr, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, and acquired by the Conservancy in early October. According to State Archaeologist Michael Barber, “The site is legendary in Virginia archaeology and it was one of the first sites I was made aware of in that first introductory class to archaeology 30 some years ago.  It is unique and has always been a concern due to its extreme importance.” The mound and its associated occupation could offer information concerning the development of complex societies in southwestern Virginia during the Late Woodland/Mississippian period, and the interactions of these societies with groups in North Carolina and Tennessee.

Carson Mounds (Mississippi)

In his 1894 Bureau of Ethnology publication on the mounds of the Eastern United States, Cyrus Thomas published a map of the Carson Mounds site in northwestern Mississippi that included more than 80 mounds. At the height of its occupation during the Mississippian Period (ca. A.D. 1000- 1500), Carson was second in size to Cahokia, the huge Mississippian city in southwest Illinois.

While the exact boundaries of this enormous site are unknown, it is estimated that it is one mile in length from east to west and half a mile north and south. Much of the site has been destroyed over the years, and the Conservancy has recently acquired four of Carson’s six remaining mounds using emergency POINT funds.

Jeffrey Rockshelter and Village (Virginia)

Located on the Potomac River in Loudoun County in northern Virginia, the Jeffrey Rockshelter contains the remains of over 10,000 years of human activity. A few hundred yards from the rockshelter sits Jeffrey Village, an equally ancient site. Both of these sites are part of the Conservancy’s newest preserve in Virginia.

The Jeffrey Rockshelter was first investigated in the 1960s and ‘70s by the Archaeological Society of Virginia. These excavations produced a large amount of data, including hearths, postmolds, projectile points, bone, and fragments of steatite and ceramic vessels. The Jeffrey Village site was first identified in 1937 by Richard Slattery. Between 1964 and 1975, the Archaeological Society of Virginia conducted surface collections that recovered over 10,000 artifacts spanning 10,000 years.

Aurora Colony Hotel (Oregon)

The collaboration between a conservation-minded California investment firm, an Oregon archeologist, and the Conservancy has resulted in the preservation of the Aurora Colony Hotel site. The town of Aurora, Oregon is one of the historical gems of the Pacific Northwest. Situated within a veritable agricultural Eden midway between Salem and Portland, Aurora boasts 20 sites listed on the National Register Historic Places.

There were a number of 19th-century utopian communities, such as the Shaker and the Oneida, in the Eastern United States, but the Aurora Colony was the only utopian settlement on the West Coast. William Keil founded the Aurora Colony on the same principles—the members of Keil’s colony worked and lived together, and shared all property—that made his first community in Bethel, Missouri a success. With the Bethel community flourishing, Keil decided to start another. In 1853, Keil sent members of his Bethel Colony on the Oregon Trail with instructions to find a suitable home for a satellite community in the Oregon Territory. In 1856, Keil settled his colony in the Willamette Valley in northwest Oregon.

Patricia Campbell (Oregon)

The Patricia Campbell sites, the Conservancy’s latest acquisitions in Oregon, lie at the bottom of Rock Creek Canyon, in the north-central part of the state. The two rockshelters were recorded in 1938 by Alex Krieger of the University of Oregon, who was surveying other well-known sites in north-central Oregon.  He noted black and red pictographs at the larger of the two sites and flakes in both. “These rockshelters undoubtedly contain much interesting material,” he wrote.

Wanting to preserve the sites in the name of his deceased sister, Patricia, who previously owned the land, Mac Campbell, the current landowner, contacted Catherine Dickson with the Cultural Resources Protection Program of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Dickson and her colleagues visited the sites in 2006. Dickson told the Conservancy about the sites, and it is in the process of purchasing them from Campbell.

Miller Grove (Illinois)

Around 1845, a number of Tennessee slaveholders, experiencing a change of heart, released their slaves. These freed slaves took up residence at Miller Grove, in the southeastern portion of the free state of Illinois, where their former owners purchased land for them.

In many ways, Miller Grove was a typical 19th-century Midwest community. It comprised a number of dispersed farmsteads focused on small-scale, mixed agriculture. The principle crops were wheat, corn, beans, peas, and tobacco. Cattle, sheep, and horses were kept in small numbers, and butter was made to be sold at market. The community was centered on its church, which also served as its schoolhouse.

Miller Grove is unusual in that it was created mainly by freed slaves who managed to establish and maintain an independent community in a time of great racial oppression. It’s also thought to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad, as might be expected given the racial make-up of the community and its location only 12 miles from the slave-state of Kentucky.

Avenue (Oregon)

Seaside lies at the southern end of massive sand dunes on Oregon’s north coast known as the Clatsop Plains. Four thousand years ago people settled this area, establishing three major villages. The Conservancy has recently acquired a portion of one of those villages, known as the Avenue site.

The site was first recorded in the early 1950s by archaeologist Lloyd Collins, and in the 1960s it was investigated by amateur archaeologists. Tom Connolly, a University of Oregon archaeologist, evaluated and mapped the site in 1988. He returned there in 2002 with another University of Oregon archaeologist, Guy Tasa, at the request of the Oregon Department of Transportation to conduct test excavations in advance of a proposed highway relocation project.

Their investigations revealed cultural deposits over five feet in depth. The recovered artifacts included projectile points, bifaces, dentalium beads, fishing gorges, and bone whistle fragments. Their data indicated that the Avenue site was first occupied around 2000 B.C.

Troyville (Louisiana)

The Conservancy has acquired part of Troyville, a mound group that was once believed to have been largely destroyed. Named for the 18th-century plantation on which it was located, Troyville was situated at the confluence of the Tensas, Ouachita, and Little rivers. It is the type-site for the Troyville culture and dates to approximately A.D. 600.

Troyville’s large, elaborate, platform mounds were presumably used for public rituals or ceremonies. The earliest descriptions of Troyville indicate it held as few as six and as many as 12 mounds, but all accounts agree that the site was dominated by what was called the Great Mound, which stood approximately 80 feet high and consisted of three levels—two rectangular mounds, crowned by a conical mound. The Great Mound was surrounded by smaller mounds ranging in heights from 12 to 20 feet. Troyville also had an embankment on its southern and western sides.