page_title: Two Dogs Site
section_title: Excavation history
hierarchical_section_title: Two Dogs Site / Excavation history
caption_attribution_description: English: Uwharrie National Forest, North Carolina
context_page_description: The Two Dogs Site is a lithic quarry site located in Person County, North Carolina. This prehistoric archaeological site dates to the Middle Archaic and Woodland Periods, and it is classified as a lithic quarry site due to the presence of thousands of lithic artifacts found there. Located in the Carolina Slate Belt, the stone materials present at Two Dogs provided prehistoric peoples with openly accessible lithic resources, predominantly for tool-making, as they passed through the site between other, more residential areas. Two Dogs was excavated from 2004-2005 following shovel testing at the beginning of the decade. The lithic materials found at the Two Dogs Site were subjected to petrographic analysis, and isotopes were geochemically tested to confirm the origins of the stone artifacts. The Two Dogs site has been determined to be neither residential or agricultural; rather, this site was exclusively an area where people from nearby sedentary civilizations could access their necessary lithic resources.
context_section_description: The Two Dogs Site was first identified when Environmental Services, Inc. conducted shovel tests over an area of almost 70,000 square meters, which was found to contain large amounts of lithic materials. Field Excavations were conducted at Two Dogs during the winter from 2004 to 2005, and the researchers developed a strategy to sample the site in order to manage the high volume of lithic materials to be excavated, catalogued, and analyzed. Following well-established archaeological field procedures, the site was split into five areas, denoted as areas A-E, and a random stratified survey was conducted at the site with a total of 225 test units initially sampled. No unit was tested within five meters of another unit or shovel test, which allowed the field archaeologists to avoid sampling the areas unevenly. Once these units were given GPS coordinates and mapped, the data from the 225 sampled units was combined with data from the previous 149 shovel tests conducted in 2001; this allowed for the identification of specific places within the Two Dogs Site where further excavation would provide the most useful results. Thirteen one meter by one meter units to be excavated more thoroughly were placed across the Two Dogs Site based on artifact density and patterns of different lithic material findings, and this excavation project yielded thousands of lithic artifacts and no distinct architectural features or indicators of war.
caption: This is a view of the nearby Uwharrie National Forest today. Middle Archaic and Woodland Period Uwharrie groups have been connected to the Two Dogs Site using isotopic analysis of lithic artifacts.
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