Town Creek Indian Mound

Town Creek Indian Mound

Town Creek (Montgomery County)

Summers 1969-70, I directed fieldwork at Town Creek Indian Mound, a North Carolina State Historic Site. The site had been a central feature of the research of my graduate mentor, Professor Joffre Lanning Coe, since 1934. Prior to my tenure at Town Creek, my graduate-student friend Roy Dickens had directed the archaeological program, and sometime before him both Bennie Keel, my first teacher in field archaeology, and Stanley South, my mentor and colleague in historical archaeology, had directed Town Creek excavations and reconstructions. South reconstructed the temple shown in the photograph.

Trowelling a ten-foot square, 1956. The man wearing black shirt and fedora is Ed Gaines, groundskeeper and archaeological technician for many years. Gaines worked with many archaeologists including Stanley South, David Phelps, Bennie Keel, Roy Dickens, and myself. When I built a new photo tower in the late 1960s, it replaced the tower shown here. This photo was probably taken by Stanley South.