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Hot Topic (More than 10 Replies) Once Upon a Time on the Tar River (Read 843 times)
JoeM
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Once Upon a Time on the Tar River
Jan 28th, 2025 at 10:40pm
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One of this winters' projects has been to go through all my boxes and containers of broken artifacts and pot sherds from collecting days that I haven't looked at in at least 25 years and figure out what to do with them. I may have to start a new rock-artifact-garden.
I had forgotten about collecting this site and thought I'd post some pictures of what we found.
This was a unique exposure and I only visited it for about a year, Spring of 1996-1997. 1996 was a bad weather year, starting with bad thunderstorms with tornadoes in April and then the historic Hurricane Fran in September. This site, in low old wood land along the Tar River in Franklin County, was first exposed after flooding and a tornado brought down many of the old growth trees in a 2-3 acre area. All the high ground above this bottomland was plowed fields that we would occasionally hunt for artifacts, but after the storm the owner decided to get some heavy equipment down there and try and salvage some of the old 100 year old wood and possibly create some more crop land in the process and, of course, we asked him if it would be alright to poke around and take a look. The landowner was as curious as we were and was happy to let us.

There was a small semi cleared some what level spot in the middle of the new clearing that we checked first and found some lithic debris and some pottery, but no Holy Grail. One of the pieces of equipment being used in the clearing was this big old bulldozer thing with 5 or 6 foot tall tires on it and all around the cleared spot there were tire ruts three feet deep where it was sinking into the super saturated soil. And in the side of one of those ruts rubbed perfectly smooth was the profile of an old fire pit or hearth, cut right in two, a perfect profile. Exactly what archaeologists laboriously do when first excavating a pit or feature had already been done for us and was staring us in the face. The pit was a black smear 3-4 feet deep. We found two other pits, one unearthed by the roots of a fallen tree.

So here are some of the finds. This is a Late Woodland site so there's lots of pottery, ie; ceramics. I'm guessing the main occupation was from the Coastal cultures of Clements to Gaston, 1400-1700AD., with a possible co-habitation overlap with the Piedmont Uwharrie culture early, 1200-1400AD. This area of the Tar River would be the western extent of the Coastal Plain.

  I know you can't see much detail in the first picture but these mended pieces are all from the same pot and I laid them out like that so you could get an idea of how large this pot was. The second picture is a close-up of the rim sherd.
  

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JoeM
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Re: Once Upon a Time on the Tar River
Reply #1 - Jan 28th, 2025 at 10:42pm
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At least 80% of the pot sherds had either Simple Stamped or Cord Marked surface treatments. It can sometimes be very hard to tell the two treatments apart, but often times you can see the impression in the clay of the twists used in making the cordage. The cord is wrapped around a flattened branch, used like a paddle. Simple Stamp could be a wooden paddle with incised grooves or just wrapped with a strip of plant material, or a hide thong. The paddles are wrapped to create a surface that the clay won't stick to. Nothing worse than trying to make a pot with a sticky paddle.
A lot of the pieces in these examples are rim sherds.
  

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JoeM
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Re: Once Upon a Time on the Tar River
Reply #2 - Jan 28th, 2025 at 11:00pm
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Besides for the Simple Stamp and Cord Marked, the only other surface treatment we found was this large Check Stamped urn. I think, but don't quote me, Check Stamp paddles are considered a 'Carved' paddle and are made by carving or incising crossing lines.
And, yes, this could look like a "Net-Impressed" surface treatment. There is such a thing but you can usually easily see the knots at each corner.
In the third pic you can see scratch marks across the top half of the pieces. These are from smoothing and final shaping of the pot.

  

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JoeM
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Re: Once Upon a Time on the Tar River
Reply #3 - Jan 28th, 2025 at 11:12pm
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Here are a few examples of "smoothed over" sherds. The pot may have been intentionally smoothed over or randomly just from handling.
And front and back, or interior and exterior pics of a small cup fragments. Was it a sacred ceremonial beverage cup, or made by a child practicing?
  

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JoeM
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Re: Once Upon a Time on the Tar River
Reply #4 - Jan 28th, 2025 at 11:17pm
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Gotta have a pipe!
  

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JoeM
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Re: Once Upon a Time on the Tar River
Reply #5 - Jan 28th, 2025 at 11:34pm
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I believe this piece of sandstone was well used as an abrading stone. Not sure what they needed ground down but I believe they were doing some of it on this. Both sides pictured.

And then a picture of some of the arrowheads these pottery making people were using. I did find some made from rock other than quartz, but not whole specimens. And quartz was by far the most prominent. Which is really another signature of a Coastal culture preference, assuming Piedmont cultures would be more familiar with the volcanic rocks of their turf.

And finally, both sides of a few old buttons found mixed in.

  

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Re: Once Upon a Time on the Tar River
Reply #6 - Jan 29th, 2025 at 5:06pm
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Wow! thanks for sharing.
  
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Re: Once Upon a Time on the Tar River
Reply #7 - Jan 30th, 2025 at 10:30am
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All nice finds Joe. Thanks for the photos and the history lesson.
  
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JoeM
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Re: Once Upon a Time on the Tar River
Reply #8 - Jan 30th, 2025 at 5:46pm
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Thanks! Glad you found something of interest.  Smiley
The surface treatment of the ceramics is very hard to get good detail in pictures unless you do one piece at a time. I was trying to show more of a variety than getting down to nitty-gritty detail. Wink
  
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JoeM
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Re: Once Upon a Time on the Tar River
Reply #9 - Feb 19th, 2025 at 12:08pm
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Since I was going through these old finds, I thought I would take a few more pics of the pottery, ie; ceramics.

A few Cord Marked sherds trying to show the twists in the cordage used.
  

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JoeM
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Re: Once Upon a Time on the Tar River
Reply #10 - Feb 19th, 2025 at 12:13pm
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Woven Fabric Impressed Sherds.
This type of surface treatment is often mistaken for Corn Cob impressions.
  

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JoeM
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Re: Once Upon a Time on the Tar River
Reply #11 - Feb 19th, 2025 at 12:20pm
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I looked for a good example of Net-Impressed but only found this one sherd for an example. On some pots the knots at the corners of the squares are more well defined. Net-Impressed is more uncommon than other techniques.
  

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