2000 Survey at Van Winkle's Mill

Between June 13 and June 29, 2000 Arkansas Archeological Survey Sponsored Research Program personnel undertook an inventory of cultural resources on SWL property within Van Hollow on Beaver Lake. Project goals were to determine the spatial extent and location of cultural features associated with Van Winkle's Mill within Van Hollow and, more generally, to identify any other cultural resources in need of archeological assessment within the project area.

The entire east-west breadth of Van Hollow was surveyed from the foundation of Peter Van Winkle's Mill on the south to the shores of what is now Beaver Lake in the north. As this area is only one part of Van Hollow proper, which is known to contain many cultural features important to the understanding of local and regional histories, two survey methods were used to cover this area as thoroughly as possible. First, a systematic, traditional archeological survey was conducted. This was followed by a set of intuitive metal detector transects which were performed in an attempt to locate more ephemeral features which could potentially "fall through the cracks" of traditional survey methods.

Survey transects ran either due magnetic east (90 ) or due magnetic west (270 ) beginning at the northernmost portion of the shoreline of Beaver Lake in Van Hollow (at 1117.70 ft. in elevation) and continuing at 20m intervals south to Little Clifty Creek. On the south side of Little Clifty Creek transect intervals were tightened to 10m in order to discern smaller features within the known mill complex. Once an archeological deposit was identified through subsurface testing, shovel test spacing was generally reduced as necessary in order to assess horizontal and vertical limits of the archeological feature/locus.

2000 Survey area.

Features discovered during 2000 survey.

Features/Loci Identified by the Van Hollow Survey

Soils in the Ozark uplands are notoriously shallow and Van Hollow is no exception. Two soil types dominated the survey area: Elsah cherty silt loam and Clarksville cherty silt loam. The narrow flood plain running through the core of the survey area was made up of the undifferentiated Elsah soil group, a silt loam whose A horizon is usually between 0 and 18cm deep and has a 75 percent chert fragment content by volume. The surrounding moderately-steep to steep valley walls were largely Clarksville chert silt loam, a shallow soil with numerous small rock outcrops and limestone bedrock relatively near the surface.

A total of 472 artifacts were recovered from 186 shovel tests and various general surface collections. These shovel tests were excavated to an average depth of 21.8 cmbs with the maximum shovel test depth being 78.6 cmbs. The majority of material culture was recovered from shovel tests in the shallow, but level, Elsah soil group. Six loci were given archeological feature designations as a result of this survey. Newly identified archeological features clearly associated with 3BE413 were assigned a number in the sequence already established by earlier work at the site.

A total of five features (Features 27-31) were discovered during the traditional survey, and one additional feature (Feature 32) was identified during the intuitive metal detector survey. All archeological features discovered during the course of this survey were associated with 3BE413, thus no discrete archeological site numbers were assigned to archeological resources.

• A photo gallery of the 2000 survey project.