The Site

This site represents a Native American fortified town that was occupied during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by ancestors of the Shakori and Eno tribes who were local to the Chapel Hill area. It was first investigated in 1938, and at the time was thought to be an Occaneechi town visited by John Lawson in 1701. Extensive excavations were conducted in 1940-1941, 1983-1984, and in 2001-2002. These revealed several circular alignments of postholes were houses once stood, evidence for multiple defensive walls, called stockades, surrounding the village, and dense deposits of refuse within a thick midden at the northern edge of the site. The 2015 field school excavations will add to this growing body of archaeological evidence about the Wall site and, in particular, will investigate an area along the northern edge of the village where, in 2002, unexpected evidence was found for a seventeenth-century, early historic-period occupation.