Mitch Emmons (emmonmb@mail.auburn.edu)

WILCOX COUNTY INDIAN SITE TO BE PROBED BY AU ARCHAEOLOGISTS

AUBURN -- As long ago as 2,000 B.C., man roamed the wilderness of what is now Alabama, hunting, fishing and forming tight-knit communities that today are evidenced only by traces of stone-aged implements.

This summer, high school students, teachers and others interested in Alabama's natural history can join Auburn University archaeologists in exploring an Indian village site in southwest Alabama that dates back to the Woodland and Mississippian periods.

Known as the Indian Hill Site, the village occupied a one-to-two acre knoll about 10 miles from Camden, in northern Wilcox County.

It is on a piece of high ground in the midst of the Alabama River and the Pine Barren Creek floodplains, says AU archaeologist John Cottier, an associate professor of sociology at AU and co-director of the excavation which will be the 18th summer expedition of the Alabama Museum of Natural History.

"The higher ground was an ideal location for a camp or village because the hilltop never floods," Cottier said. People from the Woodland and Mississippian cultures built dwellings there 1,000 to 2,000 years ago, hunting game, fishing in the river and gather mollusks.

Archaeologists believe the site was perhaps a permanent village several times, especially during the mound building period, says Cottier, who first did research at the site in the mid-1960s.

"It hasn't been revisited for excavation purposes since then," he said.

The small size of the Indian Hill Site -- as compared to the Creek Indian sites such as Elmore County's Fusihatchee, which was the museum's archaeological expedition last summer -- will enable excavation of the entire village.

"Because it's a small site, we can try to investigate most of its entirety," Cottier said. "Fusihatchee was such a large town, that we only could excavate sections. What we're doing (at Indian Hill) is re-focusing some of our interest and efforts and looking at earlier periods of time."

Fusihatchee, a 17th-century Creek Indian town, produced information about the effects of European contact with the Indians. Scientists there have unearthed glass and metal artifacts and evidence of how tribal traditions began to decline as a result of European settlement of America.

Cottier, who will be joined during the expedition by AU at Montgomery archaeologist Craig Sheldon, expects the Indian Hill Site to produce only stone-aged implements and artifacts.

"This is a prehistoric site," he said. "Unlike at Fusihatchee, we don't expect to find anything from the European or historic periods of time."

But Cottier says evidence previously unearthed at the Indian Hill Site indicates that its occupants traded with Gulf Coast Indians and with the inhabitants of the ceremonial town in Moundville -- the largest population center of Native Americans in the Southeast during the Mississippian period.

The expedition sponsored by the University of Alabama-based Alabama Museum of Natural History begins June 16 and ends July 13. Participants attend one week sessions, taking part in the actual archaeological dig, learning about excavation techniques, lab procedures and artifact identification.

Individual cost is $200 per week for members of the Alabama Natural History Society and $225 for non-members. Food, tents and scientific equipment are provided. Expedition members bring only their bedrolls and personal items.

For more information, contact The Alabama Museum of Natural History at 205/348-0534.

may96:AU-indians

CONTACT: Cottier, 844-2835.