A Site Visit to Bryant Preserve œ Southern Virginia

Hi everyone, Kelly Berliner here again, Eastern Regional Director for the Archaeological Conservancy, and today we're out at the Bryant site. So this is a site located in southern Virginia, and the site you can see is off just behind me in this area that's grown over. And so this contains a middle to late woodland village site that is considered to be part of the Dan River phase, and that's because it's located along the Dan River and shares characteristics with other sites that are located along this river from North Carolina and into Virginia. Behind me is the Dan River, so this the land sort of drops down into the river, and of course the river would have been an incredibly important means of transportation for the Native Americans living at this site. In truth, it would have been quite like a highway for them. There actually are a number of villages found in this region of Virginia and into North Carolina along the Dan River, such that these woodland period villages, which date to oh between AD 1000 and 1450, are referred to as Dan River phase sites. Larger populations of people living in these villages, particular types of pottery that are associated with these people, a lot of different types of tools made from bone, shell, and clay, and so a lot of interesting things to study when comparing these villages. In truth, there hasn't been a whole lot of research done on this site, so there's a lot of potential for future study. Prior to acquiring it here at the Conservancy, there were issues with people coming out here to illegally excavate and loot the site, and so part of our management is to keep it in tall grass, as you can see here, versus the surrounding area, which is farmed pretty intensively, and this helps keep a cover over the surface of the village and the artifacts and generally acts as a bit of a deterrent. We also work with a number of site stewards who farm the adjacent property and also hunt our property to help have somebody who's keeping an eye and ear on things. Okay, so I'm going to do my best to give a bit of the lay of the land here. So the Conservancy preserved a little bit over 15 acres. We were really fortunate back in 2008, both the local town and the county determined that this site was really important and decided to work with the Conservancy and donate the land for permanent preservation, and so the layout here is behind me. You see this uncut field, and as I said, we keep that tall to discourage people from collecting any artifacts out here and just to protect the site from erosion issues, and so roughly behind me is where the actual village is located, and it's on this large floodplain. If I pivot here, you can see this broad, flat floodplain area, and then, of course, there's a tree line beyond the field, and beyond that tree line, it drops down into the Dan River, so this site would have had wonderful access to the river for resources but also for transportation. I should point out that even though we do let the field grow up in tall grasses as part of our management plan to protect the site, we do make sure it gets cut every two to three years, and this prevents woody growth from coming up as woody growth has more aggressive roots that would negatively impact the archaeological stratigraphy of the site. We will continue to manage the property in this way, unless any issues arise, in which case we can adjust our management plan. Otherwise, we will hold this property, and hopefully somebody will want to come out here and do some research in the future. So I've been out here today walking around the field, tramping through the woods just to make sure that nobody is trespassing on the property or engaging in any illegal excavation or anything like that, and I'm happy to report that everything looks good. It doesn't look like anybody's been out here mucking around, and so we can update our files and just note that our most recent visit, everything was in good shape, and reach out to our site stewards and just make sure they haven't seen anything going on as well.