Archaeological Investigations at Yourhaney Plantation (38GE18)

ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS AT YOURHANEY PLANTATION65A large quantity of prehistoric artifacts were also recovered from the feature, which may indicatethat the feature was backfilled rather than allowed to fill up through time. The 211 prehistoricsherds are summarized below in Table 2. Sherds were Early Woodland to Mississippian Period.149 lithic artifacts are shown in Table 3. None of the debitage was diagnostic.The feature is unusual in that it is relatively large, straight sided, and flat bottomed. It is also quiteshallow. Assuming the overbearing top soil was one foot deep in this location, the maximum depthis only 1.4 feet below natural ground surface. It is possible that it is a root or storage pit. Whatwas interpreted to be a root pit at a tar kiln camp at the 18 th Neale Plantation in Columbus County,North Carolina was approximately 8 by 4 feet and perhaps about 2.5 feet at its maximum depth(Adams 1998). At a postbellum tenant farming complex near Hephzibah, Georgia, a roughlyrectangular yard root cellar was found that measured approximately 11 by 7 feet and extendedapproximately 2.4 feet from the original ground surface (Adams et al. 2005). A squarish yard rootcellar at a tenant site on the Savannah River site has been found that measured 4 by 5.25 feet andextended about 2.2 feet below the original ground surface (Crass and Brooks 1995).It appears that the root pit was located in the yard, was filled in, and a later structure (Structure 4)was built on this spot, which intruded into the feature. This structure will be discussed in a latersection of the report.FEATURE 25 – PREHISTORIC PITFeature 25 is an oval shaped pit measuring 1.8 by 1.4 feet in size and extending 0.3 feet intosubsoil. The fill consists of brown (10YR4/3) loamy sand. Artifacts consisted of one residualsherd, one plain Wilmington/Hanover grog tempered sherd, one medium sand and grogWilmington/Hanover cord marked sherd, and one Thoms Creek fine sand tempered plain sherd.No lithic debitage was recovered from this feature.FEATURE 26 – PREHISTORIC POSTFeature 26 is a circular post measuring 0.5 feet in diameter and extending 0.5 feet into subsoil.The fill consisted of dark grayish brown (10YR3/2) loamy sand. Only one artifact was recoveredfrom this feature, which consisted of a plain Thoms Creek fine sand tempered sherd.FEATURE 29 – HISTORIC POSTFeature 29 is a square post measuring 0.6 by 0.6 feet in size and extending 0.4 feet into thesubsoil. It contained a post hole and mold. The post hole contained brown (10YR5/4) loamysand, mottled with brown (10YR4/3) loamy sand, which was the color of the mold. Two plain andone simple stamped or incised fine sand tempered wares and one residual sherd was recoveredfrom this feature. These are believed to be Thoms Creek. However, in addition to these prehistoricsherds, one fragment of clear lead glass was also recovered. An OCR date of 1766 was obtainedfrom this feature.