Nipper Creek (38RD18)

National Register Listing

Street Address:

Address Restricted (Richland County)

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NRHP Nomination

Record Number:

S10817740094

Description and Narrative:

The Nipper Creek site, located near the fall-line of the Broad River north of Columbia, is a deep, stratified, Piedmont site buried by colluvial sand. Artifactual evidence documents 11,000 years of human activity at the site, from the first Paleo-Indian occupants of the region to historic times. Cultural periods and phases represented at the site by diagnostic hafted bifaces are Paleo-Indian, Early Archaic, Middle Archaic, Late Archaic, Woodland, Mississippian, and Historic. The site contains stratified Archaic assemblages, and appears to have been a habitation site fairly continuously during Archaic times (8,500 – 2,000 B.C.). The stratified record covering more than 6,000 years of human occupation provides a valuable framework for studying cultural change among extinct hunter-gatherer societies. Datable quantities of charcoal are present. The geological processes at Nipper Creek are also relatively unique. A colluvial system produced the deep sand in which the artifacts at this Piedmont site are buried, and Nipper Creek is the first prehistoric site of the kind reported in South Carolina. Listed in the National Register December 24, 1986.

Level of Significance:

State

Area of Significance:

Archeology: Prehistoric

National Register Determination:

listed

Date of Certification:

December 24 1986

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