HPC agenda 052699 - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

Page 28 The Fort Defiance Archaeological Project involves studies of the site of Fort Defiance in Caldwell County . The fort was constructed in 1769 to protect local settlers from attacks by the nearby Cherokee . In 1788 William Lenoir , a captain . in Rutherford' s 1775 campaign against the Cherokee , built a house on or very near the original fort . The purposes of_ the investigation are to evaluate the archaeological integrity of the site as a whole , locate the original fort , and confirm the presence or absence of Lenoir ' s house site and associated outbuildings . Dr . Larry R . Kimball, director, Laboratories of Archaeological Science , Appalachian State University, is principal investigator for the project . The grant to the North Carolina Archaeological Council will support "The North Carolina Lithics Research Conference : The Uwharries , " a conference on lithics (i . e . , stone tools and debris) , the most common artifact types found at many precontact Native American archaeological sites . The conference will include six workshop sessions , each dealing with a different aspect of lithic technology and raw material analyses . An important product of the conference will be a standardized raw material terminology, a crucial aspect of studies of precontact settlement and distribution . Discussions of projectile point and tool typologies should yield a better understanding of the cultural sequences of the Piedmont region and the state as a whole . Transcripts of workshop sessions will be made available through the North F :.. . Carolina Archaeology Web site (http : //www. arch . dcr . state . nc . us) . -1Vlark A . Mathis BEAUFORT INLET SHIPWRECK PROJECT UPDATE In October 1997 the Underwater Archaeology Unit (UAU) conducted a month-long investigation of site 0003BUI, the shipwreck near Beaufort Inlet thought to be the remains of the pirate Blackbeard ' s flagship Queen Anne 's Revenge. The UAU was assisted in the project by Intersal , Inc . , the group that discovered the shipwreck, and its nonprofit affiliate , the Maritime Research Institute (MI"' . Support also came from the North Carolina Maritime Museum; the University of North Carolina-Wilmington Center for Marine Sciences the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Institute for Marine Sciences ; the East Carolina University Program in Maritime History and Underwater Archaeology; the Institute of International Maritime Research; and Cape Fear Community College . Project participants made 321 separate dives , spending a total of 286 hours on the site . Excellent weather allowed divers to systematically map exposed features and conduct a number of test excavations . The divers located three large anchors and fifteen cannons . During the last week of the project underwater archaeologists raised two six-pounder cannons , each weighing more than two thousand pounds . At the Gallants Channel laboratory in Beaufort , the cannons are being cleaned using electrolytic reduction, a process that could take up to four years to complete . In addition to the cannons , project divers recovered two pewter platters , cannonballs , glass and ceramic fragments , numerous iron concretions , and nearly two hundred ballast stones . Like the bronze bell and brass blunderbuss barrel found by Intersal divers in November 1996 , the artifacts consistently date to the early eighteenth century . Many of the artifacts have been incorporated into a traveling display, which is touring eastern