Central Piedmont

The central Piedmont is that part of the North Carolina Piedmont drained by the upper portions of the Neuse and Cape Fear Rivers. During the Paleo-Indian, Archaic, and Early and Middle Woodland periods archaeology of the central Piedmont is much like the rest of the Piedmont. After A.D. 1000 the local expression of the Piedmont Village Tradition is the Haw River phase.

Doerschuk (31MG22)

The Doerschuk site was named after and discovered by Herbert Doerschuk in 1928 and is located on the east bank of the Yadkin River near Falls Dam. Along with the Hardaway site, Doerschuk was instrumental in allowing Joffre Coe to create an Archaic-period projectile point chronology based on intact stratigraphy. Coe’s excavations recovered an enormous amount of material; more than 6,800 artifacts spanning a period of more than 8,000 years.

Fredricks (31OR231)

The Fredricks site is a historic Occaneechi village that was visited in 1701 by the traveler John Lawson. The fact that Lawson was able to see the village when he was traveling along the Great Trading Path is something of a stroke of luck, as Fredricks was only occupied for about a decade, roughly between A.D. 1690-1710. The site was excavated as part of the Siouan Project, which was restarted in 1983.

Wall (31OR11)

The Wall site is located along a bend of the Eno River in Hillsborough, N.C., and was initially thought to be the site of an Occaneechi village visited by John Lawson in 1701. Instead, it was a compact, palisaded village occupied during the Late Woodland period, from roughly A.D. 1400-1600. The Wall site is important because it represents one of the best examples we have of a large Late Woodland community and allows us to understand how villages grew in size and how people both maintained and altered structures over time.