Catawba Archaeology, Part I: Investigating Catawba Resilience and Survival through Settlement History and Material Culture

The Catawba Indian Nation Cultural Services Division is a division of the Catawba Indian Nation government, formed in April 2020, when the Catawba Cultural Preservation Project (1993-2020) was incorporated into tribal government. Departments of the Cultural Services Division include: the Catawba Cultural Center, Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO), Tribal Programs, Public Programs, Community Library, and the Catawba Nation Archives.

Dr. Davis is Research Archaeologist Emeritus and former Associate Director of the Research Laboratories of Archaeology and Adjunct Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research has focused on the early history of Native Americans in the American South and particularly on the impact of European colonization on native peoples in Virginia and the Carolinas during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. This research has been conducted as two long-term projects. The first of these is the Siouan Project, which explored more than a dozen late pre-contact and early contact-period sites in north-central North Carolina to identify and explain the patterns and processes of culture change that accompanied the first encounters with English explorers and traders in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. This research, undertaken between 1983 and 2002 in collaboration with H. Trawick Ward and Roy S. Dickens, Jr., was supported by major grants from the National Geographic Society and the National Science Foundation.

In 2001, Dr. Davis and Brett H. Riggs I began a second long-term project—the Catawba Project—to study the emergence of the Catawba Nation through a process of coalescence in the early eighteenth century and to document the Nation’s social, economic, and political transformation during the late Colonial and early Federal periods. Toward this end, and with support of the University of North Carolina, the National Geographic Society, South Carolina state government, and private industry, the project has conducted major excavations at the sites of Nassaw-Weyapee, Old Town, New Town, and Ayers Town along the Catawba River in South Carolina, and more limited investigations at several other nearby sites.

Since 1992, Dr. Davis has also undertaken numerous archaeological excavations on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. These investigations, usually conducted ahead of construction or renovation projects, have contributed significantly to understanding campus life during the university’s first 100 years and provided a convenient laboratory for training students in archaeological field methods.

Finally, Dr. Davis has pursued a career-long interest in archaeological visualization, ranging from traditional techniques of field photography and mapping to CAD, GIS, and the creation of 3D models using digital photogrammetry. He remains particularly interested in the application of emerging technologies to archaeological problems, especially as they relate to the spatial analysis of archaeological data.