Prior to the beginning of the 1991 excavation, a permanent datum point was established at the extreme northwest corner of the site. This point was placed north of the sand road and in the tree line bordering Guthrie Creek. Both the site and the magnetic survey grid (see above) were tied into a wooden stake marking this datum. Upon completion of the 1991 season, the wooden stake was replaced by a three foot long, four inch diameter concrete datum marker (into which was set an eight inch galvanized steel nail) which was set flush with the ground surface.
After the site datum was established, a transit was used to sight in a 180 meter baseline running due east (90 degrees) from magnetic north. A working site grid composed of wooden stakes set at 20 meter intervals was constructed to the east and south of the datum point. The grid stakes were set in using transit and tapes and numbered with south and east coordinates in meters from the datum point which was designated as "south 00, east 00". The completed grid measured 180 meters (east-west) by 80 meters (north-south). During the 1992 season, the site grid was expanded to include the northern portion of the site which was located beyond the fence line (Figure 3).
During the second week of the 1991 field season, the 20 meter interval site grid was subdivided into five meter by five meter collection squares using metric tapes and survey flags (Figure 5). Student crew members were assigned to individual squares and instructed to collect all visible surface material larger than one centimeter in diameter. Collected material was rough-sorted in the field into the following categories: ceramic, chert, rock, bone, and historic material. (Later, in the laboratory, the "rock" category was subdivided into Limestone" and "firecracked rock"; the latter category contained mostly sandstone and a few fragments of geodes.) Materials belonging to each class were bagged separately and weighed in the field. Each bag of surface material was assigned a separate field specimen number and all provenience information was logged as each square was completed. Using this procedure, the field crew was able to collect approximately 11,800 square meters of surface area in four, eight-hour days. This area comprised nearly all of the site located south of the sand road (see Figure 5). The recorded weights of surface material were used to construct artifact density maps for the area collected (see Figures 6-10), and these maps proved extremely useful for identifying the location and size of surface concentrations of cultural material. The distribution maps of pottery and bone turned out to be the most helpful for isolating the areal extent of the Oliver phase component at the site.
The ceramic distribution appeared as a semicircular ring of debris located in the northeast corner of the site (see Figure 6). This ring measured about 80 meters in diameter and was truncated at its northern edge by the farm road and the uncultivated area beyond. This pattern of surface debris was immediately recognized as the probable remains of a circular village. Similar artifact distributions have been recorded for numerous Fort Ancient Tradition village sites in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky (Essenpreis 1982; Graybill 1981; Henderson 1992; Heilman and Hoefer 1981). Excavation of several of these components revealed a uniform settlement pattern consisting of concentric rings of houses, storage/refuse pits, and burials surrounding an open plaza.
The surface map of bone debris at the Clampitt site revealed a semicircular-shaped pattern which corresponded with the location of the ceramic scatter (Figure 7). It was concluded that the matching surface distributions of ceramic and bone refuse most likely resulted from the agricultural disturbance of subsurface pit features within the village perimeter.
The distribution maps of lithic materials (chert, limestone, and firecracked rock) showed concentrations which corresponded with the supposed village area but also revealed dense surface accumulations of lithic material to the west near the terrace edge (Figures 8 and 10). The presence of numerous Early to Late Archaic varieties of projectile points among the debris in the latter area suggested that this artifact concentration was, in part, the result of previous occupations of the site. Several fragments of Paleoindian points have been found near the western edge of the site as well. The most commonly found evidence of a pre- Oliver phase occupation of the site were Merom Expanding Stem and Trimble Side Notched points which are diagnostic of the Late Archaic Riverton Culture (ca. 1600-1000 B.C.) (Winters 1969; Justice 1987).
