(Rev. 12/18/08)
Biography and Research Interests
Adjunct Professor of Anthropology,
History and Philosophy Department
North Georgia College and State University, Dahlonega, Georgia
Dr. Jack Wynn is a native Georgian, having lived in Thomasville, Decatur, Gainesville, and Dahlonega. Dr. Wynn majored in History at Georgia State in Atlanta, and earned his MA and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Missouri. His specialty was Latin American Archaeology, and he did field work in Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia, and Uruguay. He has taught at Mississippi State, Georgia State, Gainesville College, and La Universidad Nacional del Uruguay, in Montevideo. His MA thesis was on residential architecture at the AD 1000 Toltec capital at Tula, Hidalgo, Mexico. His dissertation was on the ceramics of the AD 750-1600-period Tairona Indian cultures near Santa Marta, Colombia. He now teaches Anthropology part-time at NGCSU. From December 1979 until retirement in September 2000, he served as Forest Archaeologist for the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests in Georgia.
As Forest Archaeologist, Dr. Wynn conducted surveys on the National Forests for archaeological and historic sites. Then he recorded, evaluated, tested, and protected those that might be disturbed by planned projects. These surveys resulted in hundreds of in-house reports. The position also included oversight of some 25-30 contract survey projects by private firms working on the National Forest lands in Georgia.
Dr. Wynn and his professional and volunteer colleagues helped discover and define the previously unknown prehistoric Vining Phase culture in middle Georgia that existed ca. 900-1150 A.D. That work was published twice in Early Georgia. More recently, he directed excavations on the 19th Century industrial town of Scull Shoals, now a ghost town in Greene County, south of Athens. Work there was jointly supported by the Forest Service and Friends of Scull Shoals, Inc., a non-profit educational organization for the site. That work has been published in various Forest Service project reports, in public presentations, and appeared in the 2004 issue of EARLY GEORGIA. Friends of Scull Shoals offers tours of the old mill town, and festivals of 19th century crafts by modern crafters each year.
Dr. Wynn has written cultural heritage resource management plans for the National Forests in Mississippi and Georgia, and for Ft. Jackson, South Carolina., and socio-economic overviews for the National Forests In Georgia. He also summarized archaeological research on the Mississippian culture period in the north Georgia Blue Ridge area in 1990, published by the University of Georgia. A report on the excavations at Scull Shoals is due out soon in EARLY GEORGIA.
Throughout his career, Dr. Wynn has worked extensively with volunteers who want to learn about archaeology. He helped found and advise the Georgia Mountains Archaeological Society, a chapter of the Society for Georgia Archaeology, 1986-2000, then re-established it in 2005. Between 1990 and 2003, he directed over 500 volunteers in surveys and excavations of prehistoric and historic sites on the National Forests in a program called Passport In Time (PIT). Their over 7,000 hours of work has been reported in Forest Service reports on the PIT projects, as well as public and professional presentations through the years.
The enthusiastic PIT and Friends of Scull Shoals volunteers have done library and archival research, oral history interviews, field surveys, excavations, and laboratory analysis work on the Scull Shoals investigations, which are still continuing. They participated in three two-week summer field projects 1997-1999, and in a year- round weekend project from the fall of 1999 until spring 2003. For more information about this project, just ask! Also see the Friends own Website; www.scullshoals.org