The Bowers site represents a log cabin, dating to the early 1800s, and probably was part of the Catawba Indian community known as Turkey-head. It was excavated between February 13th and March 14th, 2002 by Steve Davis and Brett Riggs with assistance from Andrew Demas, Lloyd Richter, Michelle Schohn, and Lauren Davis. Work consisted of shovel testing to locate the site, the excavation of five one-by-one-meter units to expose a rectancular cellar pit, and auger testing of the site to assess the presence and distribution of other archaeological features. A brief summary of what we found at the Bowers site, along with pictures of the fieldwork and artifacts found, is provided below.

Click on any thumbnail image below to view a larger picture.

Contour map of the Bowers site

Excavation Summary

The Bowers site (RLA-SOC 617) was the first to be studied by the Catawba Project. Located atop a high ridge flanking the Catawba alluvial valley, this site represents a log cabin that probably was part of the early nineteenth-century Catawba community called Turkey-head and mentioned by Robert Mills in Statistics of South Carolina (1826, pp. 115, 601). It was first discovered by Steve Davis and others as part of a high school project in 1970 and was re-located by shovel testing February 2002. One of the shovel tests hit the top of a rectangular cellar pit that measured 1.2 x 1.8 m at the top and was 0.3 m deep. The fill excavated from the cellar yielded over 2,000 artifacts, including Catawba burnished pottery (representing pans, bowls, jars, and a cup), pearlware sherds, clay pipe fragments, glass fragments, brass buttons, lead shot, a snaffle bit, glass beads, and other unidentifiable metal artifacts. Several of the Catawba rimsherds were decorated with a reddish-orange commercial paint. This excavation was important for two reasons. First, it gave us our first excavated sample of artifacts from a Catawba cabin site. Second, it gave us important information about what a late eighteenth-century-early nineteenth-century Catawba site should look like archaeologically and what kinds of field methods might be most appropriate for finding such sites.