Paperback – November 1, 2009
by  David Hally  (Editor, Contributor),‎     David G. Anderson  (Contributor),‎     Charles Hudson  (Contributor),‎     Gregory Waselkov  (Contributor)
 
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: University of Georgia Press (November 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0820334928
ISBN-13: 978-0820334929
Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 0.5 x 11 inches
 
From 1933 to 1941, Macon was the site of the largest archaeological excavation ever undertaken in Georgia and one of the most significant archaeological projects to be initiated by the federal government during the depression. The project was administered by the National Park Service and funded at times by such government programs as the Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, and Civil Works Administration.
The best-known excavations were conducted at the Macon Plateau site, the area President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed as the Ocmulgee National Monument in 1936. Although a wealth of material was recovered from the site in the 1930s, little provision was made for analyzing and reporting it. Consequently, much information is still unpublished.
The sixteen essays in this volume were presented at a symposium to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Ocmulgee National Monument. The symposium provided archaeologists with an opportunity to update the work begun a half-century before and to bring it into the larger context of southeastern history and general advances in archaeological research and methodology. Among the topics discussed are platform mounds, settlement patterns, agronomic practices, earth lodges, human skeletal remains, Macon Plateau culture origins, relations of site inhabitants with other aboriginal societies and Europeans, and the challenges of administering excavations and park development.