Archaeology
Excavation

Excavation efforts at Hardaway began in earnest after World War II. In 1948, a five-foot square exploratory excavation unit was dug at what appeared to be the center of the site, and a second unit was excavated on March 3, 1951, resulting in the recovery of over 1,500 artifacts. Most pottery and projectile points were found in the upper layers of plowed soil. By June 1954, UNC had obtained a lease from the Carolina Aluminum Company for extensive excavations. By August 1957, twenty-three units totaling 575 square feet had been excavated, and a six-week excavation in July 1958 added another 450 square feet and seventeen hearths to the findings. Despite the site covering only about an acre, a remarkable number of additional artifacts were collected from the surface and excavated area.

Research at the site halted after the 1959 season for more than fifteen years. During this period and following the publication of Coe’s The Formative Cultures of the Carolina Piedmont in 1964, looting at the site increased significantly. In response, a final phase of work was conducted between 1975 and 1980 to define site limits, obtain subsistence data, and identify potential activity areas. Trawick Ward supervised those [BTM1] excavations, which, despite increased looting, revealed extraordinary numbers of artifacts in both disturbed and undisturbed soil. Between 1975 and 1980, excavations yielded literally tons of stone tools and debris, although stratified deposits were less well-preserved than hoped.

Dr. Steve Davis, noted during an April 2024 roundtable discussion that the Research Laboratories of Archaeology at the University of North Carolina hold most of the artifacts from the Hardaway Site and also from the Doerschuk site, Lowder’s Ferry site and several smaller sites throughout Stanly, Montgomery, and Randolph County. Approximately 1.5 million artifacts, a total of over 15 tons of artifacts and stone flakes (debitage) are stored there. Most of those artifacts and stone flakes originate from rhyolite sourced from Morrow Mountain and Tater Top Mountain.

Coe’s groundbreaking work, The Formative Cultures of the Carolina Piedmont (1964) provided a comprehensive study of the Hardaway Site. Coe discovered three fluted points on the surface, two of them were Clovis points similar to the earliest Clovis points found in New Mexico and the third was a Redstone point. The spearpoints he found at the deepest excavated level he named Hardaway Blades. Coe described these Hardaway Blades as being as old as, or possibly older than, Clovis spearpoints and suggested that the Hardaway Site might have been occupied by Native Americans for over 13,000 years. However, some researchers estimate the site’s age to be between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago. Due to the absence of adjacent organic material, radiocarbon dating has not provided conclusive answers. Coe concluded that resolving the age of the Hardaway complex would require the discovery of other stratified areas with intact deposits that can be dated using radiometric techniques. The smaller Hardaway Blades, which are clearly not Hardaway-Dalton pre-forms, are now being viewed by Dr. Randy Daniel and others as possibly being even older than Clovis. Some Hardaway Blades are similar to the oldest points found at Cactus Hill and Meadowcroft Rockshelter.