The Stanfield-Worley Bluff Shelter, named for the owners of the adjoining properties on which the structure is located, is an archaeological site in Colbert County that contains evidence of human habitation stretching at least 9,000 years. Despite being heavily looted in the early twentieth century, it still provided evidence of one of the most significant records of Native American prehistory in Alabama, with artifacts and other materials dating from the Paleoindian (~ 15,000 to 9,000 years ago) through the Mississippian periods (1000 to 1550 AD). It was excavated in the 1960s over a three-year period by a team headed by archaeologist David L. DeJarnette of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County.


Zone B, located above the layer of clean sand, contained debris and artifacts that mostly date to the Middle Archaic period, sometime between 6,000 and 4,000 BCE. During this time, the shelter was used as a burial site as well as a residence. Of the 11 graves found at the site, at least six dated to the Middle Archaic, with the rest dating to later periods of occupation. Some of the people were buried with tools that likely were viewed as useful to the departed in the afterlife. Because the tools were all assembled and buried together at the same time in a grave, archaeologists can tell much about what sort of tools were being used during that period.
The uppermost soil layer, Zone A, produced artifacts from a broad period of time, ranging from from the Woodland period (~ 3,000 to 1,000 years ago) to the Mississippian period. Most of the artifacts in this upper zone had been disturbed from their original context, but materials buried in storage pits dug into lower layers during those times were preserved in place. The lower sections of Zone A produced significant amounts of Woodland pottery and projectile points, indicating longer residency by the Native Americans at that time. Mississippian artifacts were almost all projectile points, suggesting that the site was used almost exclusively as a hunting camp.
Archaeologists from UA and AAS analyzed materials from the excavations and established a projectile point typology that spans thousands of years. This typology is still used by archaeologists to date many other archaeological sites that contain projectile points. The typology, along with analysis of pottery, animal bones, other stone and bone tools, and radiocarbon dates, was published in AAS's Journal of Alabama Archaeology in 1962. Much of the material excavated, stored at the Walter B. Jones Archaeological Museum at Moundville Archaeological Park, has not been analyzed, leaving much still to be learned about the people who inhabited the Stanfield-Worley Bluff Shelter.
Additional Resources
DeJarnette, David L., Edward B. Kurjack, and James W. Cambron. "Stanfield-Worley Bluff Shelter Excavations." Journal of Alabama Archaeology 8 (December 1962): 1-124.
Additional Resources
DeJarnette, David L., Edward B. Kurjack, and James W. Cambron. "Stanfield-Worley Bluff Shelter Excavations." Journal of Alabama Archaeology 8 (December 1962): 1-124.
Futato, Eugene M. "A Synopsis of Paleoindian and Early Archaic Research in Alabama." In The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast, edited by David G. Anderson and Kenneth E. Sassaman. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996.
———. "The North Alabama Project: An AAS Excavation Scrapbook." Journal of Alabama Archaeology 50 (December 2004): 71-137.