- Title
- Our State
-
-
- Date
- March 2003
-
-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
-
Our State
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tar heel history
Shards of an Olive Jar:
Archaeological Excavations
in the Catawba River Valley
A recently dtsanrred fort in Burke County confirms tluit Spanish
explorers were
о
presence in North Carolina decades before
the establishment of the Lost Colony.
НУ
Joi GOODPASTURE
As .1 child, Rob Beck loved lo
rtroll along a Burke County
creek hank. searching lor
arrowheads and ««her artifacts from an
ancient Native American settlement.
The farm land he explored, owned by
his aunt and uncle. Pat and James
Berry, yielded a young boy's treasure of
annual bones, gaming devices, pottery
shards, tools, and arrowheads.
Inspired by this evidence of a lost
civilization, young Beck vowed to
S
t
2 i
l
become an archaeologist. That dream
came true, and years later, on the vtmc
site he explored as a boy. Beck made a
discovery that sheds new light on the
European settlement of North America.
Experts now believe the Berry sue.
off 1-40 near Morganton. was the
location of a 16th-century Spanish fort
that existed 20 years before the
establishment of the Lost Colony on
Roanoke Island.
"This is considered a major find in
archacologh.il circles." says Dr. David
Moore, a teacher at Warren Wilson
College and director of the Upper
Catawba Archaeological Project.
“This gives us a window into that
incredible time when Europeans were
discovering this new land for their
purposes and also impacting the
native peoples already here."
A neglected time
The ongoing archaeological research
in Burke County promises to provide
fresh insight into a neglected time in
American history w hen Native
Americans first encountered European
explorers. Investigators believe the 12-
acre Berry utc is an ancestral Cataw ba
Indian town, one of several that
existed along the headwaters of the
Catawba River during the 1 5th and
16th centuries.
Situated in the fertile floodplain of
the Upper Catawba River, the town
was populated by several hundred
Native Americans who grew corn,
squash, and tobacco and hunted game
in the nearby foothills. Earthen
mounds and public plazas nulled the
symbolic center of the town and were
surrounded bv dwellings and
workspaces. A 15-foot platform
mound once existed on the Berry site
but was bulldozed in the 1960s.
The Native American community
was located on a major trading path,
and the community would likely have
maintained social relationships and
exchanged goods with other villages in
the region.
To understand how this thrising
Native American town became the site
of
л
1 6«h century Spanish fort, some
background alvout the early Spanish
explorations in the new world is helpfuL
According to Moore. Spain looked
to Elonda for more land and nehes
following the conquest of the Aztecs
in Mexico and Incas in South America.
Hernando de Soto and his army
traveled from Florida through what is
.Un*«U Our Sate 25
