New Acquisitions

As the only national non-profit organization that acquires endangered archaeological sites, The Archaeological Conservancy has preserved more than 400 sites across the country. Below are some of the Conservancy's most recent projects.

Elk Ridge Mimbres (New Mexico)

The Elk Ridge Mimbres site is located in the northern part of the Mimbres Valley.  Unlike other sites in the area, it’s buried under as much as six feet of alluvium, which protected it for many years.  One of the previous owners eventually discovered the site and, though he used mechanical equipment to dig for pottery, disturbed a relatively small area. 

Recent investigations have determined that much of the site, including a large multi-roomed, cobble-walled architectural unit, is still intact. There is also a large rectangular shaped room that may have functioned as a great kiva. If so, it’s the only undisturbed great kiva left on private land in the valley. The northern portion of the site, which reaches into the Gila National Forest, is intact and protected.

Culture and Time Period: Mogollon-Mimbres Phase A.D. 1000-1150

Acquisition: The Conservancy has negotiated a real estate purchase option with the owner. The purchase price and additional costs for developing management and public educational programs is $120,649.

How you can help: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Elk Ridge Mimbres site, 5301 Central Ave. NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1530.

LA 149 (New Mexico)

Archaeologists have identified at least five major pueblos in the Santa Fe River and Cienega Creek watersheds between Santa Fe and La Cienega, all of which were occupied in the late 1200s through the early 1400s. Other smaller, but equally important, sites are found in the area surrounding the larger pueblos and they complete the cultural landscape.  The Conservancy recently signed an option to buy one of these sites, which is known as LA 149.  This designation is the Museum of New Mexico’s Laboratory of Anthropology’s identification number assigned to the site when it was first documented in 1925 by noted Southwestern archaeologist H. P. Mera.           

Although LA 149 was documented long ago, few archaeologists have visited the site because it’s been buried under alluvial soils that have accumulated over the years. It was “rediscovered” by the property owner in the early 1990s when large numbers of artifacts were found while building the foundation for a new home.

Culture and Time Period: Ancestral Puebloan, Late A.D. 1300s to Early 1400s

Acquisition: The Conservancy has a real estate option from the owner in a bargain sale to charity transaction. The purchase price and additional costs for developing management and public educational programs will be $79,149. The property owner is valued at $145,000.

How you can help: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: LA 149 in La Cienega Archaeological site, 5301 Central Ave. NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1530.

Holy Ground (Alabama)

In the first half of the 19th century, Creek Indians in what is now Alabama watched with alarm as white settlers encroached on Creek lands. The Creeks were divided over how to cope with the intrusions of land hungry settlers, partly because the Creeks’ lives were so intertwined with those of the settlers and their African slaves due to intermarrying. It was inevitable that what started out as a civil war within the Creek nation would involve everyone on the southwestern frontier and forever change its cultural landscape. The Conservancy’s 400th site, Holy Ground Village and Battlefield, played an important role in these historic events.

Culture and Time Period: Historic Creek and Red Stick Wars, 1813-14

Status: The site is threatened by development.

Aquisition: The Conservancy needs to raise $180,000 to purchase the lots.

How you can help: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Holy Ground, 5301 Central Ave., NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1530.

Indian Castle (New York)

Indian Castle is a 17th-century Onondaga village located in the center of New York State near the town of Pompey. The site is thought to have been inhabited during a time of tremendous cultural change resulting from Europeans moving into the area.     

Indian Castle is situated on a steep hill overlooking a stream. Its name comes from the European practice of describing Iroquois towns, with their fortified hilltop communities surrounded by wooden palisade walls, as ‘castles.’ The Onondaga were part of the five nations that formed the Iroquois Confederacy. The other nations included the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, and Mohawk. The Tuscarora later became the sixth member.

Culture and Time Period: 17th-century Onondaga

Status: The site is threatened by development

Aquisition: The Conservancy needs to raise 170,000.

How you can help: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Indian Castle, 5301 Central Avenue, NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1530.

Shelton Stone Mound (Alabama)

The Conservancy recently acquired the Shelton Stone Mound Complex, which is believed to be a regional ceremonial site constructed by Woodland and Mississippian people sometime between 1000 B.C. to A.D. 1600.  The 13-acre site is located on the eastern slope of Choccolocco Mountain overlooking Whites Gap in northeast Alabama. A team from the Jacksonville State University Archaeological Resource Laboratory, led by Harry O. Holstein, has been conducting field investigations there.

In August of 2003, A. C. Shelton, having discovered many strange rock piles on his property, contacted Holstein. He and his team visited the property and found numerous stone conical mounds and several stone walls. They subsequently returned to the site a number of times, and in February 2006, they began to map it. 

The complex consists of 79 stone conical mounds and one horseshoe shaped mound. There are also 31 linear stone walls, one serpent-like and one “Z” shaped stone walls, and one oval boulder configuration.  The mounds range in size from about one and a half to seven feet in height and three to six feet in width.

Hewitt-Olmsted (Iowa)

In 1840, construction began on Fort Atkinson in Northeastern Iowa, which led to the development of a small town of the same name.  This fort was established by the U.S. Army to enforce the government’s Indian removal policy, and especially to monitor the Ho-Chunk—then known to the government as the Winnebago—to ensure they didn’t return to their homeland in Wisconsin. The fort also served to prevent unlawful incursions from other tribes and European American settlers. The mid 19th century was a time of constant movement for native tribes as settlers moved west past the Mississippi River. 

Seeing an opportunity to trade with these newcomers, David Olmsted obtained a permit from the government in 1842 to build an Indian trading post about two miles southwest of the fort that’s known as Hewitt-Olmsted. (A man named Joseph Hewitt is also thought to have played a role in founding the establishment.)  This trading post consisted of five one-story log structures: a large store, a storage house, a blacksmith shop, and two large residences.  It was a place where the Winnebago, who lived nearby, could exchange goods and interact with white settlers.

Old Fort Stokes (Maryland)

The War of 1812, in which America fought Great Britain from 1812 to 1815, is sometimes referred to as America’s second war of independence. Despite the importance of this conflict, some of the sites associated with it are largely forgotten. Old Fort Stokes, located in Easton, Maryland, is one such site. Consisting of a series of earthworks with placements for large cannons, it has been noted in a few newspaper articles and in one local history book, but nothing more.

The fort was originally constructed to defend the Town of Easton, and it may be the only known earthen fort still remaining on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Though locals have discovered cannonballs at the site, one of which is now in the custody of the Talbot County Historical Society, no professional excavations have taken place there.

Fort Tombecbe (Alabama)

As 18th century colonial powers struggled for control of lands in the New World, they quickly learned that it was essential to gain the friendship and loyalty of the Indian tribes controlling the major waterways and the large swaths of land bordering them. The French managed to do this when they established their colony at Mobile, in the southern part of what is now the state of Alabama, in 1702.

However, not too far north, along the Tombigbee River, the Chickasaw tribe maintained a friendly relationship with the English, who were sending traders from the Carolinas to live with the tribe. This alliance brought English influence so close to the French colony that it presented a potential threat to France’s foothold in the region. Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville had this in mind in 1736, when he traveled nearly 300 miles north of Mobile, up the Tombigbee River to establish a fort near the Choctaw Indians, who were the mortal enemies of the Chickasaw.

Bienville established the fort, called Fort Tombecbe, on a bluff above the river. From here, the French were able to court the Choctaw with trade goods and the promise of protection from the Chickasaw. During their occupation of Tombecbe, the French launched several military expeditions against the Chickasaw until the British took control of the fort in 1763, renaming it Fort York. They abandoned it in 1768.

Spikebuck Town (North Carolina)

The Cherokee people have inhabited the areas of the southern Appalachian Mountains for centuries, and at one time their territory stretched along parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, and North and South Carolina. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Cherokee towns, farmsteads, and ceremonial centers dotted the landscape along the river valleys of this region.  Their interactions with other native groups, as well as the Europeans and colonial Americans, are an important part of our nation’s history.   

Beginning in the 1500s a series of Cherokee settlements known as the “Valley Towns” were established along the Hiwassee River and its tributaries in western North Carolina. These communities were situated on wide flood plains and their occupants benefited from the rich soils and abundant fish and game.           

The Conservancy is in the process of acquiring Spikebuck Town, which is one of the Valley Towns. Located in Hayesville, near the confluence of Town Creek and the Hiwassee, Spikebuck Town was a large settlement surrounded by small, scattered farmsteads. It also appears to have been a ceremonial center. The site features a large, well-preserved earthen mound. This is remarkable because only a few of the mounds that were associated with the Valley Towns exist, the others having been destroyed over the years by plowing and looting.

Culture and Time Period: Historic Cherokee

Status: The site is threatened by development.

Acquistion: The Conservancy needs to raise $450,000 to purchase 22 acres.

How you can help: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Spikebuck Town. 5301 Central Avenue NE,

Sloan (Arkansas)

The Conservancy recently obtained the Sloan site, which is located on a sandy ridge in northeast Arkansas’s Cache River Valley and dates to approximately 8500 B.C., during the Dalton Period. The site contains what has been called the oldest cemetery in the New World. The Dalton people were hunter-gatherers who lived during the transition from the Ice Age to the Holocene. At that time, the landscape was filled with large spaces of low lying grasslands crisscrossed by networks of shallow streams and high sandy terraces covered with hardwood forests.  This environment provided rich hunting grounds for the Dalton people during their seasonal migrations.

Dalton people are named for the eponymous stone projectile points they used. These long, lanceolate-shaped points were attached to a handle or spear shaft. In addition to these points, the Sloan site has also yielded a variety of stone tools that were employed by the Dalton people.

Cade (Wisconsin)

The Archaeological Conservancy has partnered with the Mississippi Valley Conservancy (MVC) and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to acquire 70 acres along the Bad Axe River in southwestern Wisconsin. The property, the Bernice Cade farm, is the central portion of the Cade Archaeological District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The property has several significant archaeological resources including two effigy mounds groups, two late prehistoric habitation sites, and an unexplored rockshelter that shows signs of prehistoric occupation.  

The two well-preserved effigy mound groups are located in the wooded slopes overlooking the river. Effigy Mounds date from about A.D. 750 to 1100 and are primarily found in Wisconsin. About 85 percent of Wisconsin's effigy mounds have been destroyed, so the Cade property is "an opportunity to preserve what has become a rare and unique resource," according to Joe Tiffany, Director of the Mississippi Valley Archaeological Center at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

Culture and Time Period: Principally Effigy Mound Culture and Great Oasis Culture, circa A.D. 600-1100

Status: The sites are threatened by residential development.

Acquisition: The Conservancy needs to raise $60,000.

How you can help: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Cade, 5301 Central Ave., NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1530.

Plum Creek (Louisiana)

Located in Ouachita Parish, in northeastern Louisiana, the Plum Creek site is a Middle Archaic Period (ca. 3500 B.C.) site that is located in an area known for its mound sites from this period. Plum Creek was named for the timber company that previously owned the site, and it was discovered by Bryan Davis and later investigated by Louisiana Regional Archaeologists Joe Saunders and Reca Bamberg-Jones in 1997.          

Although there is no mound at Plum Creek, the evidence of its occupation resembles those of Watson Brake and Frenchman’s Bend Mounds, two of the region’s large archaic mound sites. Bulverde, Carrollton, Ellis, Sinner, and Evans projectile points have been discovered there, as they have at other Archaic sites in northeast Louisiana. The site is also covered with fire-cracked rocks, which are commonly found at Archaic sites. These rocks were heated for cooking, which caused them to fracture.

Walraven (Florida)

The Walraven Shell Midden is located in the middle of the St. Johns River on picturesque Drayton Island in northeast Florida. The 30-acre site was recently donated to the Conservancy by a private party. The site has been the home of numerous prehistoric peoples, most of whom existed during the Middle to Late Woodland periods from approximately 500 B.C. to European contact, around A.D. 1565. 

The shell midden consists mainly of the remains of various types of mollusks that were eaten by the people living at Walraven. Archaeologist Chris Newman of Archaeological Consultants, Inc., a cultural resource management firm in Florida, and several island landowners visited the site in June of last year to determine its occupation and boundaries. 

Thunderbird (Virginia)

The Thunderbird site, located along the Shenandoah River near Front Royal in northwestern Virginia, was discovered in the late 1960s by members of the Archeological Society of Virginia. It became one of the best- known Paleo-Indian sites in North America due to the pioneering work of the late William Gardner, an archaeologist at the Catholic University of America, who excavated the site from 1970 through 1986.

Gardner’s research revealed that Thunderbird was part of what he referred to as the Flint Run Paleoindian Complex, a series of related Paleo-Indian and Early Archaic quarry, processing, and occupation sites, including the Flint Run jasper quarry, that are located on the South Fork of the Shenandoah River. Gardner’s work at Thunderbird led to the understanding that quarry-associated base camps are a major characteristic of Paleo-Indian sites in Eastern North America, and descriptions of the Flint Run Complex are found in every major textbook on North American archaeology.

Dresden Falls (Maine)

The Dresden Falls Archaic site (8000 – 3000 B.C.) is the largest and most intensively occupied Early-to-Middle Archaic site in Maine, and it has yielded more stone artifacts from this period than any other site in the state. The site was discovered about 20 years ago by artifact collectors who reported finding stone tools in a plowed field.

In 2008, Maine Historic Preservation Commission archaeologist Arthur Spiess received permission from the landowners to conduct the first professional excavations at the site. In addition to recovering Middle Archaic projectile points and slate knife fragments, he found intact hearths and garbage pits buried a foot beneath the surface.  Charcoal from one pit was radiocarbon dated to 7,000 years ago. "At over 15 acres in size, this is one of the largest Early and Middle Archaic sites in northern New England,” said Spiess. 

Culture and Time Period: The site was threatened by development.

Acquisition: The Conservancy needs to raise $75,000.

How you can help: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Dresden Falls, 5301 Central Ave., NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1530.

Sims’ Place (Louisiana)

Covering an area of approximately 32 acres in St. Charles Parish in southern Louisiana, the Sims’ Place site is one of the largest prehistoric mound sites in the Louisiana Delta, a coastal wetland area built up by soil deposited by the Mississippi River as it enters the Gulf of Mexico. Named for the family that owned the site for many years, Sims’ Place originally contained five mounds. Two were destroyed by the construction of a road and a railroad track, and most of a third was leveled while building a house.

The other two, Mounds A and B, remain. Mound B, which is approximately seven feet tall, stands in a pasture.  Mound A is in a cemetery and several historic graves rest on top of it. The Conservancy recently acquired 60 percent ownership in Mound B and the surrounding four acres.

Rogers (Connecticut)

The Rogers site is located along the banks of the Quinebaug River in Lisbon, in southeast Connecticut. The site, which is named after the family that owns the land, was inhabited during the Late and Terminal Archaic periods (4000 to 1700 B.C.).
           
The site was first discovered in 2005, when the Rogers family gave some friends permission to look for “Indian artifacts.” The Rogers soon became concerned when they saw that over 300 stone projectile points had been unearthed; together with two unusual stone carved pendants, one in the shape of a human face, and the other resembling a caterpillar. 

Roper’s Walk (Colorado)

Much of southeast Colorado consists of dry mesas marked by deep canyons cut through sedimentary rocks by tributaries of the Arkansas River. Beginning in the 1930s, archaeologists recorded a number of prehistoric sites in the region that were usually located on elevated areas of the landscape near water sources. The sites often featured a cluster of rock slabs and pillars arranged in circles that appeared to be the bases of houses. The house walls and roof could have been made of perishable brush that was plastered with mud. Side-notched projectile points were commonly found there. Radiocarbon dates suggest these sites were occupied from A.D. 1100 to 1450.

The people who inhabited these sites are known as the Panhandle Aspect culture. This culture, which was defined by archaeologist Alex Krieger in 1946, also occupied sites in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. The Panhandle Aspect has three regional variations known as Antelope Creek, Optima, and Apishapa. Due to the limited amount of archaeological research in the region, little is known about these variants.

For the past eight years, archaeological student Chaz Evans has been hiking southeast Colorado’s canyons and mesas and recording archaeological sites. In a 2003 he found Roper’s Walk, an Apishapa village built above a tributary of the Arkansas River. The site takes its name from the Ropers, a pioneer ranching family that lived nearby.

Culture and Time Period: Apishapa (A.D. 1100-1450)

Status: The site is threatened by development.

Aquisition: The Conservancy needs to raise $61,930 by January 2012

How you can help: Please send contributions to: The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Roper's Walk, 5301 Central Ave. NE Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1530.

Newton-Hopper (New York)

The Newton-Hopper site, named after the farmers that owned this land when the site was first recorded, has been visited throughout prehistory by Native Americans. Projectile points dating back thousands of years have been found here, and it’s also the location of a Late Woodland period village, inhabited from A.D. 1550 to 1570. The 18th-century Seneca chief, Big Kettle, from the Buffalo Creek Reservation, may also be buried here.
           
Located near the Town of Elma in western New York, Newton-Hopper is the oldest of a series of villages inhabited during the Late Woodland period in this region. It sits atop a bluff overlooking a large creek, a position that was easy to defend. “The Newton-Hopper site is among the more enigmatic Late Woodland village sites” in the area, said Douglas Perrelli, an archaeologist at the University of Buffalo. It, and other nearby sites, have been largely ignored since the 1960s and ‘70s, when they were explored by avocational and professional archaeologists. 

Culture and Time Period: Late Woodland (A.D. 1550-1570)

Acquisition: The Conservancy needs to raise $45,000.

How you can help: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Newton-Hopper, 5301 Central Avenue NE Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1530.

Prospect Hill (Mississippi)

Prospect Hill was a large plantation that was established in the early 1800s by Captain Isaac Ross, a Revolutionary War veteran. Accompanied by his family and a group of slaves, Ross moved from South Carolina to southwest Mississippi, where they turned Prospect Hill into a prosperous cotton plantation at a time when the industry was benefiting from the invention of the gin.

Ross was a member of the Mississippi Colonization Society, which advocated “repatriating” freed slaves to what is now Liberia. Ross’ will decreed that Prospect Hill be sold and his slaves who chose to emigrate to Liberia be freed. Their resettlement was to be funded by the proceeds from the sale. However, his grandson, Isaac Ross Wade, contested the will in court, seeking to prevent the sale of the plantation and the freeing of the slaves. The case was tied up in litigation for a decade, during which time the house was burned during a slave uprising in April, 1845. A young girl died in the fire, and a group of slaves who were accused of orchestrating the uprising were executed on the plantation grounds.

Garcia Canyon Pueblito (New Mexico)

The love for archaeology motivated Norma Garrett to buy and protect Garcia Canyon Pueblito, perched atop a steep mesa in a residential subdivision. The Conservancy purchased the site with POINT-4 emergency acquisition funds.

An educator for over 30 years, and now a social worker, Garrett has spent her life in the American Southwest serving others. “I have deep respect for all things traditional Navajo,” Garrett said. For over a decade, she has been “trying to learn all I can about the belief system and philosophy” of the Navajo.

This passion began in 1998, when she visited archaeological sites in New Mexico’s Dinetah region, where the Navajo creation story is focused. “Garcia Pueblito was the first site I saw, at dawn with orange and yellow light reflecting off the mesa and the pueblito.” The site was in a subdivision that was being developed by Ideal Investments, and Garrett noticed a sign stating the lots beneath the mesa on which the pueblito stands were for sale. She bought them shortly thereafter.

Rosenstock (Maryland)

Located in Frederick, Maryland, the Rosenstock site contains the remains of a Late Woodland period village that radiocarbon dating indicates was inhabited sometime between A.D. 1300-1450. Recently, Aldi Inc. (Maryland), the City of Frederick, and the Conservancy partnered to preserve the site. Aldi Inc. (Maryland) generously donated the land containing the site, the City of Frederick assisted in obtaining access to the property, and the Conservancy is taking care of the associated costs, ownership, and ongoing management of the property as a preserve.

All the partners were pleased to be involved in this effort. “The City of Frederick is dedicated to the conservation of our significant historical and archaeological resources and we were happy to work with The Archaeological Conservancy and Aldi Inc. (Maryland) to help make this project possible,” said Frederick alderman Kelly Russell.

Cahokia Mound 2 and East St. Louis Mounds (Illinois)

The American Bottom, the approximately 175 square-mile expanse of Mississippi River floodplain opposite Saint Louis, Missouri, was the location of the greatest florescence of the Mississippian Culture. Scores of Mississippian towns were located there, many of them quite large. The largest, Cahokia Mounds, possessed over 100 mounds with the largest, Monks Mound, reaching 100 feet in height and covering 14 acres at the base.

Only about five miles east of Cahokia was the East Saint Louis Mound complex, encompassing about 45 mounds. The Conservancy has worked over the years to preserve important American Bottom sites and it has recently completed two more acquisitions. At East Saint Louis, the Conservancy purchased two city lots for a bargain-basement price of $750 at a tax auction. While the lots were not attractive to real estate speculators, they are contiguous to our East Saint Louis preserve and well within the prehistoric ceremonial area. Their research potential is quite high. After three years of negotiation, the Conservancy was also able to acquire Cahokia Mound 2 and the surrounding acre for $30,000.

Massey Springs (Kentucky)

The Green River Valley in Western Kentucky is a region rich with archaeological sites, including Mammoth Cave and the renowned shell mounds.  Sacred circle and conical mound earthworks are found throughout Kentucky, but hilltop enclosures are less common.  There are roughly 20 hilltop enclosure earthworks scattered throughout the state and the Conservancy, with the help of local archaeologists, is working to make sure one of the most important of these features is permanently preserved.