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I ' Page 34 CENTRAL PIEDMONT Residential and commercial development is overtaking a large portion of the landscape in Piedmont North Carolina, and rural areas are rapidly disappearing . Wake County is one of the leaders in this trend, and soon the agrarian history of the area may only be preserved only in the names of its subdivisions and shopping centers . Along with the rural landscape and open space , the archaeological resources of the region are being lost to bulldozers and pavement . Recent excavations in Wake County conducted in advance of development have recovered important data concerning the prehistory of the region . Wakefield The Wakefield development , located north of Raleigh , involves approximately 2 , 400 acres and is to have a mix of residential and commercial uses . Accompanying the residential portion of the project will be an educational complex containing elementary , middle , and high schools . Permits issued to the developers, and the county school system by the U . S . Army Corps of Engineers to fill wetlands triggered Section 106 compliance , and an archaeological survey of a small portion of the overall acreage was undertaken . Of the eighteen prehistoric sites discovered , three were tested to determine their eligiblity for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places . Since archaeological sites are important primarily for the information they contain , the HPO agreed that data-recovery excavations at each of the sites would adequately mitigate their loss . The three prehistoric sites (31WA1376 , 31WA1380 , and 31WA1390) are small= to moderate- sized sites representing short-term , task-specific occupations . Such sites are generally thought to be satellite occupations to larger, more permanent sites , that are likely located along the nearby Neuse River . The three sites contain intact cultural deposits dating to the Archaic and Woodland periods and will provide a picture of life in the area between one thousand and five thousand years ago . Since two of the sites are within the area slated for school construction, extensive video and photographic documentation was carried out during the project . The Wake County school system is interested in developing an exhibit and lesson plans to teach _ the students about the former inhabitants of the Wakefield sites on which the schools sit . Excavations are complete , but analysis and report preparation is still under way . Soil , phytolith , amino acid , sediment grain size , and phosphate and oxidizable carbon ratio dating samples were all taken during the excavations to provide detailed information about natural resources used by native inhabitants , as well as a more definite date of occupation . Altogether , ides insights on a wide array of research issues ranging investigation of these three sites prov from material culture and technology at specific time periods to changing settlement and subsistence systems within the larger region . U . S . 401 Bridge Site Highway improvements were the impetus for another archaeological data-recovery project in Wake County. Plans for widening U . S . Highway 401 and construction of a new bridge over