Bug Hill PDF Download

Archaeological investigations were conducted at the Bug Hill site (34Pu-116) as part of the Phase II mitigation program at Clayton Lake in southeast Oklahoma for the Tulsa District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under Contract Number DACW56-78-C-0212. The site will be inundated upon completion of the lake in the Jackfork Valley. The Bug Hill site is one of two large, dark midden mounds discovered during 1979 in the project area. Currently, these sites represent the southernmost distribution of dark midden mounds in eastern Oklahoma. Very similar sites occur along Fourche Maline Creek in Latimer and LeFlore counties. Investigations at the Bug Hill site consisted of the manual excavation of 13 2 m x 2 m, four 1 m x 1 m squares, and mechanical excavation of three backhoe trenches. Preservation of cultural deposits in the center of the site was extremely good, even though rodent disturbance and other natural processes affected their distribution in some cases. On the average, these deposits had a depth of 170-180 cm. Toward the edges of the accretional mound, the deposits became shallower and preservation was poor.