It’s the oldest known architectural style in this area, but you won’t find photographs of it, diary entries chronicling its construction, or subdivision developers trying to duplicate it. It’s neither Federal or Greek Revival and it has no Italianate overtones of influences.

It’s called Waddle and Daub, and though there are no extant examples of it – only bits and pieces of evidence Lauren Downs has been documenting its historic existence.

Downs, 28, is a doctoral student in anthropology at the University of Alabama. For the past month she has been heading a crew of students excavating a mound at the Glass Site in south Warren County along Pace’s Bayou.

Waddle and Daub, Downs explained, is the style of architecture used by local Indians several centuries ago. It was a simple form of construction using posts, twigs and branches and mud mixed with grass or Spanish moss. The posts were erected upright with the bases in a trench, forming a square about the size of an ordinary room. Twigs and branches were woven between them, then the mud, or daub, applied. It was covered with a thatched roof; entrances were at the corners. Such buildings lasted about 10 years, and repairs made them last longer.

The Glass Site, Downs said, is thought to be the northernmost point occupied by the Placquemine people from the period of around 1300 to 1650. Though the lower area along the Natchez Bluffs has been well documented, she said not much research for the period has been done in Warren County.

They were occupied at the same time, but the Glass Site is about halfway between sites to the north in Washington and Yazoo counties and Natchez, she said, making it possible that some evidence of the Mississippian Culture may be found here.

The Glass Site originally contained four mounds, maybe five. Today only one large mound some 30 feet high remains along with portions of two others. Another mound was bulldozed in the 1970s.

&#8220The last archeological work done at the site was in 1910-1911 by Clarence Bloomfield Moore,” Downs said. He observed the mounds standing around a central plaza that today is a soybean field.

Downs said the Glass mounds were the only ones on the Mississippi River, that other occupied mound sites in the area were inland along the bluffs. During the occupation of the Glass Site the river was much closer than it is today.

The mounds, she said, were built over perhaps hundreds of years, a gradual accumulation of dirt from a nearby borrow pit or from the river banks, adding &#8220we’ve found no midden, or trash, deposits” but they have unearthed many pieces of broken pottery &#8220which is so important to archeologists. Those with design make them more easily identifiable; they’re time sensitive.”

Despite popular beliefs, most mounds were not used for burials, she said. The larger one in a group was usually for the home site of the village chief, though functions changed and the elite did not always occupy the mound. Some were used for temples. Leadership in the tribe was subject to change which might cause a site to be vacated. The Glass Site was tilled occupied at the time of DeSoto’s explorations but was abandoned before the French moved into Warren County in 1698.

Downs first visited the site about three years ago when she accompanied Dr. Ian Brown from the Department of Anthropology at Alabama to the area. She later returned to assist fellow student Tom Lewis in a dig near the Big Black River.

The work is a group effort, and Downs said her field crew &#8220is really great.” Fellow students Anna Rich, Megan Batchelor, Erin Phillips and Cameron Lacquement have been with her every step of the way, and Dr. Brown has been on hand for guidance and assistance during much of the time. Others including Tom Lewis have taken time to lend a hand. &#8220Everyone is always glad to help,” Downs said, &#8220for down the road you know you’ll also need help.”

Digging and scraping and surveying is just part of the job. In the evening Downs washes the pot shards which are gathered and labeled so that she’ll know exactly where they were found. She’ll analyze them, date them, package them, anticipating finding some proof of interaction between the Placquemine and other cultures. The data will be used in her dissertation. She hopes to receive her degree in August 2008.

Her objective here, she said, was to locate and excavate a portion of a Placquemine structure and to also accumulate more information on the building and occupation of the mound and site. She and her crew have uncovered portions of maybe as many as three structures that were Waddle and Daub construction. Her work has been made possible by a grant from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and with the permission and encouragement of the Archaeological Conservancy, an organization which has purchased important sites throughout the United States in order to preserve and conserve them. They recently bought the Glass Site.

A native of Hickory, N.C., Down’s interest in archaeology began because of her passion for local and family history &#8220and we took the National Geographic magazine.” From the time she was in the fifth grade she knew she wanted to be an archaeologist. After earning an undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill she visited the University of Alabama where she found the program &#8220above and beyond” that of many other schools.

She hopes to stay in the South and perhaps do some more work at the Glass Site for &#8220there’s a gap in the knowledge of this area.”