WALLIZER
18AG44

Introduction

The Wallizer site (18AG44) is predominantly a Late Woodland period village which also contains evidence of Archaic and Middle Woodland period occupations. The site is located on a low toe slope of Warrior Mountain and a floodplain of Murley Branch, a tributary of the Potomac River in Allegany County.

Archaeological Investigations

The Wallizer site was investigated along with three other sites in the area, all of which would be impacted by proposed alignments for the National Freeway (US Interstate 68) in Allegany County. Phase I and Phase II compliance work was conducted.

These investigations indicated that the site was used as a short-term campsite or base camp in the Early Archaic, Late Archaic, and Middle Woodland periods. Around A.D. 1200-1300, the location was occupied by a horticulturally-based group who located a village on the floodplain. The time of village abandonment is unknown.

Archeobotanical Analysis

Cheryl A. Holt conducted floral analysis. Flotation samples were taken from all nine cultural features encountered at the site, but only yielded five charred seeds. Only one of these (a pennyroyal seed) is native to the Americas. Sixty-one small fragments of hickory shell, 21 fragments of black walnut, and 92 unidentified nutshell fragments recovered from the Wallizer flotation samples, suggesting that native mast harvests were important to subsistence. Wood charcoal totaled 34 fragments (0.9 grams) site-wide.

Two charcoal samples from the base of Feature 1 were submitted to the Smithsonian Institution Radiocarbon Laboratory for dating. Sample A yielded a date of 595 +/- 95 years BP: AD1355 (SI-7096), and Sample B produced a radiocarbon date of 595 +/-50 BP: AD1355 (SI7097). These dates place the occupation in the Late Woodland period.

References