NATCHEZ TRACE PARKWAY Excavations at the Pharr Mounds and the Bear Creek Site

A sample of the charcoal found in Feature 11, the supposed crematory pit beneath Mound E, was submitted to Geochron Laboratories. The date obtained, which is in the 1-sigma range, is given below:

Sample GX0845 2345 ± 90 B.P. (395 B.C.)

The date previously obtained for the Bynum Site should also be mentioned: 674 A.D. ± 150 (Libby, 1955, p. 106).

It seems obvious that the atom has failed us in both instances. The contemporaneity of Pharr and Bynum and of Pharr and Marksville has been amply demonstrated.

Dates from Marksville sites suggest that this period began around the time of Christ or shortly before and lasted until about A.D. 200. Four dates for the Helena Crossing Site have been published (Ford, 1963, p. 46): 140 B.C., A.D. 30; A.D. 220, and A.D. 335, all with a plus or minus of 150 years. The date obtained for the Panther Lake Site, which had both Tchefuncte and Marksville pottery, was A.D. 180 ± 190 (Krueger and Weeks, 1966, p. 149). The range of these dates agrees closely with that recently suggested for the Marksville period by James B. Griffin (1967, fig. 1).

It seems reasonable to assign a date of A.D. 1-200 to the Pharr Site and to the Bynum Site as well.