Highway 61 Revisited

Last week we mapped several sites south of Natchez - ironically, I don't have a comprehensive map of the area to show you, but all together we visited eleven sites and mapped five of them. Quite a start to the project! Below I have several pictures from Smith Creek, a Coles Creek period (AD 700-1100) site where Meg hopes to start a project after she graduates, and Lessley, which is down the road from Smith Creek and has a historic-period cemetery on the summit. 

"Highway 61, the main thoroughfare of the country blues, begins about where I began. I always felt like I'd started on it, always had been on it and could go anywhere, even down in to the deep Delta country. It was the same road, full of the same contradictions, the same one-horse towns, the same spiritual ancestors ... It was my place in the universe, always felt like it was in my blood."
Bob Dylan, 2004 

Meg navigates us down Highway 61

Reading up on Natchez archaeology on the way to work!

Brett and Steve set up our fixed points to make a map of Smith Creek

Mound A at Smith Creek - it's 9m tall 

Abandoned combine next to Mound A

View of Mound B from the Total Station. This is a burial mound with a "spirit barrier" around it - a ditch or moat that was dug to keep the dead spirits separate from the living.

The Lessley Site is an Indian mound used as a cemetery by the Lessley family for generations