Meeting Link: Click Here!
Excavations at Greenbrier, 2000
Meeting Time: November 14 @ 7pm (Central)
The Red River Chapter of the Arkansas Archeological Society will be having a virtual meeting this month. They are welcoming Dr. Julie Morrow (ARAS-ASU) to give a talk about the Greenbrier site. This presentation describes ongoing research of the privately owned late Mississippian town at the Greenbrier site. During the 2000 field season the Society and Survey excavated part of a burned square domestic structure (House 1) measuring about 3 m east-west x 3 m north-south. Identification and analyses of more than 9,000 ceramic sherds, predominantly from House 1 supports the idea that the pottery at Greenbrier is related to Late Mississippi period sites in the eastern Lowlands, closer to the Mississippi River. Preliminary insights from artifact analyses suggest that the residents of Greenbrier made pottery from local clay sources. A large-scale gradiometer survey of approximately 30 percent of the surface artifact distribution indicates a double walled enclosure or palisade that was expanded at least once. Images from the gradiometer survey show over 90 prehistoric structures, a central plaza, and two separate fortification alignments. Domestic structures range between
Gradiometer survey results from the Greenbrier site
About Dr. Morrow
4 x 4 and 8 x 8 meters on a side and are sometimes rebuilt near to the same location. Spatial patterning of gradiometer anomalies indicates expansion of the enclosure and rebuilding episodes of square structures inside and outside of the enclosures. Recent work includes excavation of Unit 23 in the center of the house to find the center posts.
Dr. Juliet E. Morrow (Ph.D. Washington University in 1996) worked for the US Army COE, Louis Berger and Associates, and The University of Iowa before arriving at the Survey in 1997 when she became the Station Archeologist for the Arkansas Archeological Survey’s ASU-Jonesboro Research Station. She specializes in the archaeology of the Peopling of the Americas, the Clovis culture, and descendant cultures. At Arkansas State University-Jonesboro she teaches anthropology and archeology courses and manages over 4,000 cubic feet of collections, archives, and equipment. She, her assistant Sarah Stuckey, and her students discover and investigate sites of all time periods and cultures, map cemeteries, and conduct excavations to preserve artifacts, feature contents, and data. For 26 years she has worked to assist the city of Jonesboro in their parks and cemeteries, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, the Quapaw Nation, NRCS, Ducks Unlimited and many other private and govt agencies to preserve archaeological information. The stations’ current field projects include site recording along a proposed roadway near Pocahontas, AR and excavations to recover features and artifacts to reconstruct a burned late Mississippi period house at Greenbrier.
